Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, Ed Harris)

“Gone Baby Gone” triggered a two-hour conversation between my brother and I about morality, integrity, honour and living with the consequences of doing the right thing.

Directed by Ben Affleck and starring his younger, until now overshadowed brother Casey Affleck, it’s a gripping thriller about two men investigating a grim missing-child case in a rough, poor area of Boston.

Right from the beginning, the film provides a believable, seemingly accurate illustration of Dorchester, one of Boston’s grittiest neighbourhoods and an area where Affleck’s character Patrick Kenzie grew up and still remains connected.

The film opens with footage of the area where the crime has taken place, accompanied by narration as Patrick describes his life – the images of shabby homes, children, young mothers, and people barbecuing on their front stoops, reminded me of Toronto’s Regent Park and the families I volunteer with there.

Patrick and his girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan) are low-level private investigators who make their living tracking down people who are dodging debts. When Amanda McReady, a four-year-old girl goes missing, her aunt and uncle come to Patrick for help, believing he may have local connections that the detectives, led by Ed Harris as Det. Remy Bressant, don’t.

Though the case is bigger than anything they’ve ever tackled, they grudgingly accept the job and begin talking to Patrick’s old friends, and soon find his ‘from there’ status opens doors, though it also gets them into some tight spots.

Asking too many questions in a shabby bar where the missing girl’s mother spent most of her nights, Patrick and Angie soon find the door locked and a tough, imposing crowd confronting them.

Patrick, a slight, not-so-intimidating guy, quickly rises to the challenge with a determined, unflinching gaze that suggests he’s ready for anything.

This willingness to face any challenge head on, despite the impossible odds against him, quickly comes to characterize Patrick, whether he’s threatening a Haitian gangster, challenging the integrity of the detectives working the case, or repeatedly defending his girlfriend’s honour. And it’s believable. You quickly understand that Patrick’s heart is much larger than his shoe size and his stubborn nature will accomplish great things.

That determination quickly becomes the driving force of this film. Big obstacles arise and we soon learn there’s much more to this story than what is seen on the surface. And ultimately it becomes a story about two men and their very different moral compasses and how that affects their handling of the investigation.

While Patrick almost always tries to do the right thing no matter what the consequences, he has his weaknesses, as demonstrated when he executes a child-molester and murderer, in cold blood.

Bressant, on the other hand, is a corrupt cop who admits to his willingness to bend the rules to accomplish his own ends – though his motivation is often rooted in a twisted sense of moral justice and an attempt to do the right thing.

This film is full of unexpected surprises and twists and turns, and in addition to raising deep moral questions, it keeps you on the edge of your seat, and guessing, right up until the stunning finish with Morgan Freeman that leaves a moral question mark that hangs over the credits and will haunt you for days afterwards.


Both Casey and Ben Affleck are receiving Oscar buzz for their respectable efforts on this project.

American Splendor (the book by Harvey Pekar)

I think many writers and artsy types in general often find themselves frustrated by the lack of appropriate medium or venue to tell the simple but compelling stories of everyday life. I know I often feel that way.

The other day I was driving down Dundas Street just around the corner from my house. While I was stopped at a red light at Parliament, I noticed an older black man on the far corner of the intersection. We made eye contact, and he gestured to the north in a questioning manner, and it was pretty obvious he wanted a ride somewhere. I wasn’t in a hurry, so I called him over. He hopped in and we had a really interesting conversation about his experience growing old in St. Jamestown and the Cabbagetown neighbourhood we both call home.

After I dropped him off at Bloor Street I couldn’t help but feel somewhat inspired from the conversation, and wished desperately for the means to tell the story in a way that people could easily access –- and it’s a feeling I get about once a week, usually due to some interesting, chance encounter I’d like to share before it fades away into a vague anecdote.

Harvey Pekar has found a way to do it. If you’ve seen the film ‘American Splendor’ starring Paul Giamatti you have a bit of the back-story, and you understand a little bit about this complicated writer/hospital file clerk from Cleveland. You should watch the film, definitely, but more importantly, I think, you should read his comic books.

My friend Phil recently loaned me an anthology of American Splendor comics, and I spent about three straight days locked up in my house, unable to put the book down. I ended up feeling like Harvey Pekar was someone I had known for years.

That’s to be expected, I think. Pekar’s stories are always about his everyday life, and they’re brutally, bravely honest, completely willing to be vulnerable and exposed. He describes his life and the people in it exactly the way he sees them.

He once said his stories focus on the mundane moments in life and how they add up to make an impact in the long run: “If you’re of the misery-loves-company persuasion, chances are you’ll find it comforting,” he added.

R. Crumb, an old friend of Pekar’s and one of the artists who illustrates his work, summed it up pretty well in the introduction to the book:

“The subject matter of these stories is so mundane it verges on the exotic! It is very disorienting at first, but after a while you get with it. Myself, I love it. Pekar has proven once and for all that even the most seemingly dreary and monotonous of lives is filled with poignancy and heroic struggle. All is takes is someone with an eye to see, an ear to hear, and a demented, desperate Jewish mind to get it down on paper,” Crumb says.

“It takes chutzpah to tell it exactly the way it happened, with no adornment, no great wrap-up, no bizarre twist, nothing. Pekar’s genius is that he pulls this off and does it with humour, pathos, all the drama you could ever want, and in a comic book yet.”

I once interviewed Todd McFarlane, the creator of Spawn and one of the artists to illustrate Spiderman -- pretty much a giant in the comic book world. He had a slightly different perspective on Pekar’s work.

"I don't know if it's necessarily the heroism we relate to, I think it's the flaws," he told me. "We understand that our life is completely imperfect, and these guys are completely imperfect, but somehow they're getting along and it's just called life at the end of the day and it's not meant to be perfect."

American Splendor is mostly autobiographical, with Pekar sharing anecdotes from his life in Cleveland – everything from the old Jewish guy who drives him to work, to a conversation between a veteran bus driver and the new, young driver he is training, and quite often his stories chronicle his struggles with the women in his life.

And it’s all so deeply personal. In one story he goes into great depth about losing his voice for several months, just after getting married, and all the anger, depression and worry this caused him.

“I felt anxious and guilty. My wife hadn’t known me very long before we got married. I lost my voice on the first day of my honeymoon and had barely talked for weeks after that. What kind of a husband was I? Would she forget what I was like when I could talk? What if there was something bad wrong with me?”

In another story he describes his desperate addiction to buying records and the internal battle he waged to overcome the weakness. In another, he describes helping an acquaintance that he didn’t care for all that much, to move, and how he later received a favour in return from this person.

You get the feeling that all the embarrassing parts are left in –- the self-doubt, the bad habits, weaknesses and addictions – nothing is skipped over. The stories are told with a level of transparency and honesty that gives Pekar’s writing credibility and adds integrity and value to what he has to say because he’s willing to expose so much of himself to his readers – something few writers, including myself, are willing to do on a consistent basis.

The few times I have been that honest still haunt me, and I still get butterflies thinking about how I’ve put myself out there publicly on one or two occasions. It’s scary to do that, and much easier to present a version of yourself that is slightly smarter, slightly better looking, and has fewer bad habits. I think the fact that Pekar seems to do the opposite to this, all the time, is partly what makes it so unique and intriguing.

It also helps that he has somehow convinced some really credible artists -- often by begging, harassing and cajoling – to illustrate his stories, following his pages of scribbles and stick-figure diagrams to come up with some truly beautiful works of art.

I know American Splendor isn’t for everyone and I understand why. It’s rough, really intimate, and resembles in no way the Hollywood style of storytelling most of us have been force-fed our entire lives. But that’s refreshing to me. That’s why, I think, this type of work is valuable. It takes an honest look at life, even if it’s through the eyes of one pretty unimportant, normal guy who has worked mediocre jobs and barely scraped by for years in order to just keep telling his stories and putting his work out there. Hmmm. I think there’s something honourable about that…I take it back. These stories ARE for everyone. We can all learn something from them, and we should – even it’s the simple lesson that there’s beauty and poignancy in all those little life moments and they’re worth sharing with someone else…

This is my promise: I’ll listen to your story about standing in line at the grocery store, or the streetcar drivers who held up traffic both ways to talk about a party they were both at last week, if you'll listen to mine. Those moments are important, they're inspiring and they're worth sharing. I think we’ll all be better off if we make an attempt. Who’s with me?

Once (2007, directed by John Carney, starring Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglovna)

It took me about three days to get over Once after the first time I saw it. I found myself humming the songs, re-thinking the conversations – even working out what I would have said and done differently if I were in the lead character’s shoes.

The film occupied my thoughts and conversations almost unceasingly, and just as my fascination was starting to ebb away my friend Susan gave me the soundtrack – all original songs written by the musicians who play the main roles. That triggered another wave of Once-inspired moments and I just couldn’t seem to escape the grip this Irish film had on my heart.

I guess I’m a glutton for heartache and crying myself to sleep, because I watched it again this weekend with a friend, and it set in motion a whole new wave of melancholy and bittersweet emotions and ideas.

Not that Once is a sad film. It’s not really. It’s an honest story about a brief moment in the lives of two kindred-spirits trying to get by in Dublin. But it’s told in such a sincere, genuine, compelling way that if it doesn’t break your heart your soul is probably dead.

The indie film, directed by John Carney, was shot on a tiny 130,000-Euro budget, which amounts to something like $270,000 Canadian, and the original plan was to make 1,000 DVD copies and see what happened. The film made it into the Sundance Film Festival and won the audience award. It got added momentum when Bob Dylan saw it and invited star Glen Hansard and his Irish band the Frames, to tour with him.

Now the film has people talking about Oscar possibilities and the Frames, who have put out seven albums in 17 years in Ireland but have received little international attention, are finally getting noticed outside of the island.

If you go to see it, which you definitely should, you’ll understand why.

Hansard stars in the film, playing a scruffy 30-something singer-songwriter/vacuum cleaner-repairman-busker struggling to survive in Dublin, which is apparently not much of a stretch for Hansard.

During the day he plays well-known songs that passersby can sing along to, and it’s only late at night when the streets are empty that he plays his own intense, broken-hearted ballads.

It’s during one of these moments, performing Say It To Me Now, a heart-wrenchingly honest tune about, what else, a girl, on an empty Dublin street, lost in the obvious pain of the song, that he meets Marketa Irglova’s character.

A Czech immigrant selling flowers on Dublin’s streets, she’s magnetized by his music and proceeds to enter his life, although he does his best to resist at first.

His protest doesn’t last long, and the two embark on a brief but intense friendship/romance that reminded me of Lost in Translation or Before Sunrise.

Irglova’s character is also a musician, and helps inspire him to follow his heart, both in relation to his music and a long-lost love.

This film is classified as a musical, and the genre wavers somewhere between a documentary, romance or comedy. The simple story is woven around Hansard and Irglova’s songs, which form the backbone to this film, saying just as much or more about the two nameless individuals, than their words.

The songs Falling Slowly, All the Way Down, When Your Mind’s Made Up, Say It To Me Now, The Hill – on their own would make this film worth watching, but on top of that it’s shot simply and beautifully and has a believable, real quality that sets it apart from anything else I’ve seen this year.

I think the fact that neither of the lead characters are played by professional actors just adds to this film. Even their conversations are simple and uncontrived, and just like real life they’re often awkward and painful to watch but compelling too, because they accurately capture real life moments we’ve all experienced.

The subtitle of the film asks the question “How Often Do You Find the Right Person?”

But the story, just like real life, doesn’t set about providing a simple, black and white answer to the question. Instead it says ‘here’s one story about two people, take it and come up with your own answer.’

I’m still working on it…

Go here for videos and to hear the songs: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/once/

'Once' (Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová, director John Carney)

Gabcast! audioblogs #1

Ten Canoes (Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr)

Ten Canoes is a simple, beautiful story that opens a window into a time and culture that is so far removed from my own it could belong on a different planet. But I’m glad it doesn’t, and I’m honoured to have had the chance to glimpse a forgotten, compelling way of life I previously knew nothing about.

I watched this at the Bloor Cinema, which of course is an amazing venue for all and any films, but was particularly well-suited to Ten Canoes, which, like the Bloor itself, hearkens back to a simpler era. (Side note for friends – anyone have any theories about why I’m so enthralled with old stuff?? Any ideas would be welcomed because I’m at a loss to explain it…)

The film is set in a remote corner of Australia, and is said to be the only movie thus far to have been shot in the language of the Ganlabingu people, with the assistance of English subtitles and narration.

The simple veneer of this legend-like tale is a bit deceptive, because it unfolds on several levels.

The narrator explains that he is telling a story that belongs entirely to him and his people. It begins with a group of men setting out to a far-off forest that contains trees with bark suitable to making canoes, which the men will then use for a goose-hunting expedition.

Among the group are two brothers. The elder has three wives and is a respected and stately leader, while the younger is single, just becoming a man, and has a deepening crush on his older brother’s youngest and prettiest wife.

The sojourn is rendered in a timeless, epic fashion. From the ghostly, remote forests that provide the canoe-making materials, to the swamp where the men sleep on log platforms tied to the trees to protect them from crocodiles, each frame is a work of art in itself, and I was riveted to the screen despite the somewhat meandering storytelling.

It felt like every details was authentic, from the language to the locale to the Aboriginal actors, and as though it took as long to make the film as it did for the actual expedition to happen – because every detail is just so right.

During the trip, the older brother, Minygululu, begins telling his sibling Dayindi a folk-tale about two of their ancestors, also brothers, who found themselves in a similar situation, with the younger developing feelings for one of his elder brother’s wives.

He is patient and gentle as he unfolds the story, telling it in installments as their expedition progresses. One chapter is told while they strip bark from the trees, another as they shape the canoes, another as they stand motionless in their flimsy boats in the middle of the swamp, waiting for geese, another resting on the high platforms out of harm’s way.

The film switches effortlessly between eras as the story is related, with the different time periods rendered in black and white, and colour, to indicate what strand of the story is being followed at any given time.

This is quite helpful, since actor Jamie Gulpilil plays the younger brother in both stories… make sense?

In the more ancient strand of this story, a tribe led by older brother Ridjimiraril (Crusoe Kurrdal), runs into trouble when a stranger -- offering to trade “objects of magic” -- shows up from another region, causing worry and distress among the villagers even though he is quickly sent away.

Shortly afterwards, Ridjimiraril’s second wife disappears, and he links the two events, assuming the stranger kidnapped her, which eventually leads to the accidental spearing of another stranger by Ridjimiraril, out for revenge.

This means Ridjimiraril must follow tribal law, and take part in Markaratta, which can be translated as payback, and will involve the great warrior standing target for the other tribe’s spears until he is struck.

But in a true showing of brotherly love, Yeeralparil (Gulpilil) joins his brother and the two become like ghosts evading the spears, until Ridjimiraril is eventually struck, but is proud enough and strong enough that he walks home, nursing his wound.

Later, in what is the most gripping scene of the film, he takes part in a mystical warrior’s dance, induced by his wound, and it becomes clear that this story is rooted in Aboriginal oral tradition. That it is essentially a tribal legend passed from generation to generation until the truth and mythical aspects have melded indistinguishably into one another, and it no longer really matters which is fact and which is fiction.

The scene is beautiful and powerful and makes up in spades for any slowness in the storytelling to that point.

The end of the tale, like most legends passed down through oral cultures, doesn’t tie up all the loose ends in a nice package you can take home with you – it leaves many unanswered questions, but in such a way that your imagination can fill in the gaps, and indeed I think that’s the point.

“And they all lived happily ever after,” says narrator David Gulpilil, deadpan, before breaking into raucous laughter. “Naaah, I don’t really know what happens after that.”

It’s a perfect ending for the story. No clear answers were spelled out for Dayindi by his elder brother’s history lesson, but the culturally transcendent tale still has the ability to change his life forever.

Watch this movie because it is thoughtful and compelling and provides a new window into a culture that is probably as strange to you as it is to me. But also because its lessons about people are as relevant to our culture as they are to that of Australia's Ganlabingu, or magpie goose people clan.

And do yourself a big favour and see it at the Bloor Cinema.

"I Heard the Owl Call My Name" (Margaret Craven, 1967)

I first read “I Heard the Owl Call My Name” in Morocco. I was at the end of a year-long stint doing volunteer and missions-type work in that country, and my teammate James passed it along to me after he had read it.

It was a fitting time to read such a beautiful story, because it reminded me of how much I had learned during my year in that culture, and how much my perspective, my outlook on the world, had changed from a year earlier.

The story is set on B.C.’s rugged northern coast in a small, isolated Indian fishing village, where Mark, a young Anglican vicar has been sent to serve as minister.

Before he sets out, Caleb, his mentor and wise old predecessor tells him, “Don’t be sorry for yourself because you are going to so remote a parish. Be sorry for the Indians. You know nothing and they must teach you.”

And the story, told beautifully in simple, concise sentences and paragraphs that paint a compelling picture of the people and the landscape of the region, describes the process as Mark goes from stranger to family member as the village gradually embraces him – and teaches him.

This occurs in a setting where it rains almost continuously, where rugged mountains line inhospitable shorelines, where fishing and logging are essential means to survival, and in a village that is struggling with its identity in a changing world that threatens to sweep it up in its path or leave only the tattered remnants in its wake.

It’s not surprising that IHTOCMN, though written by an American, has become a classic in Canada and can be found on the shelves of English classrooms across the country. Timeless in its delivery, and with a message that should resonate with all generations and cultures, it refuses to preach but still somehow irresistible calls on the reader to place new importance on values such as family, faith, patience and unconditional love.

Mark, though he is sent to the village implicitly to teach, becomes the student, as his values and priorities are reshaped by the villagers – and somehow, through the process of learning and being molded by the village, he also has a deep and profound impact on those that live there.

The lessons he learns are perhaps described best by the Bishop who comes to visit:

“Always when I leave the village,” the Bishop said slowly, “I try to define what it means to me, why it sends me back to the world refreshed and confident. Always I fail. It is so simple, it is difficult. When I try to put it into words, it comes out one of those unctuous, over-pious platitudes at which Bishops are expected to excel.”
They both laughed.
“But when I reach here, and I see the great scar where the inlet side shows its bones, for a moment I know.”
“What, my lord?”
“That for me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world.”
“And that, my lord?”
“Enough of the meaning of life to die.”

Those words, and the rest of the story, brought me back to the emotions I was feeling when I was preparing to leave Morocco. They reminded me of the wrong notions I had going in, about all that I could teach the people there. And the way that I had to take a steep, hard fall from that position before I realized I was the student, I was the one sent there to learn, not to teach.

And I was taken back to the sharp, deep new appreciation I had, upon leaving that part of the world for simple things such as family, faith, love, friendship, and loyalty.

And how God taught me so much and planted in me such a new set of values, forged in fire with two good friends.

And as my heart broke for the second time as I re-read the book recently, my heart also weighed heavy with the realization that those values have faded for me, lost some of their brilliance. Simplicity is in short supply here in Toronto, and as a result the beauty of a less complicated lifestyle often gets lost in the confusion and speed and chaos all around.

IHTOCMN reminded me I have to find the simple beauty that still exists here. That I need to put aside the distractions and focus on what is important – as Mark was forced to do in that tiny Indian village in order to survive, and as I was once forced to do in Morocco for the same reason.

You should read this book.

I will lend you my copy.

A Man Without A Country (Kurt Vonnegut, 2007)

The critic’s quote on the cover of “A Man Without A Country” reads: ‘This may be as close as Vonnegut ever comes to a memoir.’ And it was. Vonnegut died earlier this year, and AMWAC was his final work.

I finished reading it today, and I am still trying to make out what I think of it. One thing I am sure of is that I enjoyed it immensely. A collection of essays and personal thoughts, anecdotes and even poems, it’s completely different from anything I’ve read by the author of “Slaughterhouse Five” and “Cat’s Cradle.”

And it provides a new insight into Vonnegut’s personal thoughts, musings, beliefs and ideas on subjects such as capitalism, war, President Bush and the environment – notions that are presented much more subtly in his other works and can only really be guessed and grasped at. But in AMWAC, they are presented clearly and concisely in the same language and style that he has used effectively to tell his previous stories.

So, what follows is a collection of the passages from the book that affected me the most and, I think, give the most compelling picture of who Vonnegut really was.

* While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.” Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it.

* If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or how badly is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a good friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

* Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t the TV news is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

* Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.

* When you get to my age, if you get to my age, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, “What is life all about?” … I put my big question about my life to my son the pediatrician. Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”

* Abraham Lincoln said this about the silenced killing grounds at Gettysburg:

"We cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow this ground.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract."

Poetry! It was still possible to make horror and grief in wartime seem almost beautiful. Americans could have illusions of honour and dignity when they thought of war.

* James Polk was the person Representative Lincoln had in mind when he said what he said. Abraham Lincoln said of Polk, his president, his armed forces’ commander-in-chief:

"Trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory – that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood – that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy – he plunged into war.
Holy shit! And I thought I was the writer!"

On responding to a woman who wrote to Vonnegut about being 43 and pregnant with her first child:

Don’t do it! I wanted to tell her. It could be another George W. Bush or Lucrezia Borgia. The kid would be lucky to be born into a society where even the poor are overweight but unlucky to be in one without a national health plan or decent public education for most, where lethal injection and welfare are forms of entertainment, and where it costs an arm and a leg to go to college. … But I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.

* Requiem:

The crucified planet Earth
Should it find a voice
And a sense of irony
Might now well say
Of our abuse of it
“Forgive them, Father,
They know not what they do.”

The irony would be
That we know what
We are doing.

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.

Our Man in Havana (Graham Greene, 1958)

My friends Logan and Amanda just got back from Cuba. Along with a care-package of 50 Cohiba and Monte Cristo cigars they also brought vivid pictures and memories of their brief but fascinating exploration of the Cuban capital.

Logan described Old Havana in sharp detail, painting a mental image of ornate architecture experiencing the slow but steady decay that sea salt combined with a lack of upkeep, causes. He said it looked like it had been under water for 50 years and resembled his idea of the mystical sunken city of Atlantis.

Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” paints a similar picture. In fact, the image Logan conjured up while we sat in Jet Fuel in Cabbagetown last week was a perfect match for Greene’s description of Havana in the 1950s, so I guess not much has changed.

I love the premise of this book. James Wormold, the middle-aged ‘hero’ of the story, is a soft-spoken, mediocre Englishman who has lived in pre-Castro Havana for 20 years running his small, struggling vacuum cleaner shop. He has one friend with whom he spends about six minutes each day, is still in love with the wife who left him a decade earlier, and the possessions he cares about would fit in a single crate.

That sounds like an incredibly boring start, but Wormold has a pretty, spunky 17-year-old daughter named Millie who keeps things interesting right from the beginning. Most of his energy is spent worrying about her and trying to protect her – though she seems capable of handling herself just fine.

When the opportunity to join the British MI6 spy agency comes literally walking though the door of his shop, he decides he needs the money – and probably the distraction --badly enough to join up.

One of his key responsibilities is to recruit Cuban agents to supply intelligence, but rather than doing so Wormold sets about inventing fictional characters to fill the roles, picking names randomly from a list of country club members. The problem is, he does too good a job and his colourful cast of non-existent spies begin bringing in information that makes his superiors in London sit up and take notice.

In response to his good work London decides to boost his bureau staff, and sends Beatrice, a female agent, to work as his secretary along with Rudy, a radio operator disguised as his bookkeeper.

This is where things begin to become complicated for Wormold. His until now seemingly harmless charade suddenly becomes serious, as he needs to strengthen the web he has created around his fake agents in order to make them stand up under scrutiny.

This, he also does well – so well that Beatrice begins to fall in love with Raul, the alcoholic Cuban airline pilot Wormold has ‘recruited’ to fly surveillance missions and collect images of the massive, non-existent military constructions his spies have reported on. One of Wormold’s more colourful character studies, Raul has lost his wife in a massacre during the Spanish civil war and has become disillusioned with both sides, especially the communists, making him an ideal recruit – and an sparking intrigue in Beatrice.

This is a problem for Wormold, who has fallen in love with her and becomes irrationally jealous over the fictional character he invented as a reflection of some of the romantic aspects of his own personality.


Sometimes Wormold felt a twinge of jealousy towards Raul and he tried to blacken the picture.

“He gets through a bottle of whisky a day,” he said.

“It’s his escape from loneliness and memory,” Beatrice said. “Don’t you ever want to escape?”

“I suppose we all do sometimes.”

“I know what that kind of loneliness is like,” she said with sympathy. “Does he drink all day?”

“No, the worst hour is two in the morning, When he wakes then, he can’t sleep for thinking, so he drinks instead.” It astonished Wormold how quickly he could reply to any questions about his characters; they seemed to live on the threshold of his consciousness – he had only to turn a light on and there they were, frozen in some characteristic action.”


But soon, Beatrice’s fascination with Raul becomes the least of his problems, as Captain Segura, a feared member of the Havana police, becomes suspicious of Wormold, and as some of his star spies begin to meet with fatal coincidences, eventually leading to the complete collapse of Wormold’s carefully constructed world and a hasty departure.

Entertaining and clever, OMIH is partly a satirical mockery of the British secret service, and partly a criticism of Cuban corruption in the 50s.

Greene was well positioned to provide first-hand descriptions and criticisms of both. He actually served as an MI6 intelligence agent during the Second World War, attempting to send spies into global hotspots and later working in counter-espionage in Portugal, according to an Amazon review. He also had first hand experience in Cuba and actually met Fidel Castro, whom he supported. All that lends a sophisticated, genuine quality to a comedy of errors story that also works as a political commentary.

I recommend this book and I plan to read more Graham Greene very soon.

Harold and Maude (1971, Hal Ashby)

"Harold and Maude" manages to take seemingly opposite elements – death and love, black humour and a Cat Stevens soundtrack -- and combines them all to tell a fascinating, timeless story that had me questioning my own ideas of love.

The film starts out with Harold (Bud Cort), a somber, round-eyed, well-dressed and wealthy 20-year-old who lives with his mother, staging his own suicide.

In eerie ritualism he puts on a Cat Stevens record, lights candles, prepares the noose, and times his fall to correspond with his mother’s entrance into the room.

“I suppose this is your idea of a joke, Harold?” his mother says, unfazed by the fact that her son is swinging from a noose, and obviously accustomed to such behaviour.

From there we get an idea of Harold’s fascination with the macabre, as he fakes his own death numerous times, all for the benefit of his socialite mother – or perhaps for his own benefit, as he seems to get pleasure from trying to upset her.

In one grim scene, Harold floats face down in the pool, by all appearances dead, while his mother casually swims lengths a couple of metres away.

He’s a strange, depressed young man who seems to have little to lose when he meets Maude, through their shared pastime of attending the funerals of people they don’t know.

Though almost 80, Maude (Ruth Gordon; Rosemary’s Baby) breathes new life into Harold, taking him on adventures such as rescuing a tree in the city and replanting it in the forest – essentially defying the rules of society and showing Harold how great it can be to be alive.

In one touching scene, while they sit on a rug smoking a sheesha pipe in Maude’s converted railway-car home, Harold explains how he became obsessed with death after causing a massive explosion in the science lab at boarding school.

He ran away and returned home, convinced his academic career was over, then watched secretly while his usually cold and detached mother was informed of his death by two policemen.

“She put a hand to her forehead, and with the other she reached out as if groping for support, and with this long sigh she collapsed in their arms,” he explains, moments before breaking down in tears.

“I decided then that I enjoyed being dead.”

Maude’s response serves as a perfect description of her character, and seems to represent a turning point in Harold’s life.

“A lot of people enjoy being dead,” she tells him gently. “But they’re not dead really. They’re just backing away from life. Reach out! Take a chance! Get hurt even. Play as well as you can. Give me an L, give me an I, give me a V, give me an E. L-I-V-E, live! Otherwise you’ve got nothing to talk about in the locker room.”

Harold and Maude, though separated by generations, are soulmates and their friendship turns to love as they find common ground through their apparently opposite infatuations with death and life.

While sitting by the ocean, Harold gives Maude a gift, inscribed with the words ‘Harold loves Maude.’

“And Maude loves Harold,” she replies, before throwing it into the water.

“So I’ll always know where it is,” she says, her explanation serving as a touching reminder that the evidence of true love lies in the heart, not in things.

The Lookout (Director Scott Frank, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has come a long way from the goofy, somewhat nerdy and culturally confused alien/kid who grew up on “Third Rock From the Sun.”

The film that first brought him to my attention was “Brick,” a neo-film noire directed by Rian Johnson. It’s set in a high school and comes complete with a clever, snappy vernacular invented for the students, a teen-aged femme fatale and jocks, druggies and art geeks all convincingly transformed into feuding factions.

Gordon –Levitt is the protagonist; intense and single-minded as he penetrates headfirst into the dark world of high school crime to find out who killed his ex-girlfriend, and get revenge.

I think I was three quarters of the way into the film before I finally figured out that he was the kid from Third Rock, and I was suitably impressed by the transformation.

In “The Lookout,” too, Gordon-Levitt seems to crawl inside a new skin and transform himself into Chris Pratt, a troubled, disabled young man who once had everything – money, a beautiful girlfriend and a promising athletic career.

“It only happens once a year, and then they die,” he says at the start of the film, while racing down a country road in the middle of the night with his friends. He then switches off the headlights, revealing a mesmerizing sky filled with fireflies.

Soon after, tragedy strikes, and Chris’s life changes dramatically.

We catch up with him a few years later. He now lives with a physical and mental disability that has left him only a shell of the high school hero he once was, and he simply exists, bitter at the memory of what he once had and struggling just to survive, cohabitating -- and co-depending -- with Lewis, his blind roommate played expertly by Jeff Daniels.

Increasingly bitter at his life – or lack thereof as he sees it – Chris is targeted by bank robbers who rope him in with the promise of friendship and power.

“Whoever has the money, has the power,” says Gary, the charismatic and charming but still creepy leader of the gang, played by Matthew Goode (Match Point, Chasing Liberty.)

With little to lose, as he sees it, Chris is easy pickings, and becomes the key to their plan due to his part-time job as a night cleaner at a small town bank.

I didn’t know what to expect with this film. I couldn’t predict where it was going to go. At one point, I thought it would end with Chris helping pull off the heist, then living with the guilt from his involvement.

At another point I was sure he would be killed and the film would end darkly and realistically with bloodshed.

But you quickly realize that little is predictable or simple for Chris – whose disabilities make it nearly impossible for him to carry out simple tasks, such as sequencing what he did during the day, much less formulating a plan of action and carrying it out.

As a result the film isn’t predictable or simple either. Chris’s personal challenges give the film a sense of frustrated urgency and lend it a volatile, exciting quality that kept me on the edge of my seat until the dramatic conclusion – much like “Brick.”

Watch out for Gordon-Levitt. Thus far his film choices have been impeccable, and it’s refreshing to see a young, promising actor who hasn’t yet sold out to the highest bidder, but seems committed to making good films.

Here’s hoping he keeps it up!

The Danish Poet (Director Torill Kove)

I gained a new appreciation for storytelling when I lived in North Africa. The people of Morocco and Mauritania maintain an oral culture that we in the west have lost, for the most part, in the age of television and the Internet and iPods and Wiis.

I remember sitting on a train from Marrakech to Casablanca, listening as a tiny, old, frail looking woman held an audience of young businessmen spellbound for 20 minutes as she told them a story about someone in the market trying to swindle her earlier in the day.

Another time, my friend Ahmed and I sat in a café in the medina in Casablanca, and he listened for ages as I recounted the beautiful story of the Prodigal Son – at the end, when the father runs out to meet his son who has squandered his inheritance and come home in shame, there were tears in Ahmed’s eyes and he was genuinely touched.

It was amazing! I don’t think that would never happen here.

But I think inherently, deep inside, we still have an appreciation for the simple, beautiful, storytelling of the type done in “The Danish Poet” -- an animated short film with Canadian connections.

The film, which probes the nature of coincidence, is a joint venture between a Norwegian director, the National Film Board of Canada, and is set largely in Denmark. I, obviously, am from Canada, and two close friends whom I travelled with in North Africa, are from Denmark and Norway. Weird eh?

I watched “The Danish Poet” today at one of the personal viewing stations at the NFB on Richmond Street – to which my friend bought me a yearly membership for my birthday. Thanks Amelia!

The film, which is only 15 minutes long, starts with the Scandinavian-sounding narrator posing some of the key questions of the film over a softly glowing, animated starry sky.

“I used to think everyone was adopted from outer space,” she says. “That before we were born we were little seeds floating around in the sky waiting for someone to come and get us. The selection process was random and there was no rhyme or reason as to who our parents would be. In a way I was right because our chance to be born hinges on our parents.”

Then she begins telling the story about the fascinating series of coincidences and timely intersections that led to her parents meeting, all the while providing very funny insight into Scandinavian relations, and with brilliantly simple, mesmerizing animation that I couldn’t look away from.

A Danish poet named Kasper has writer’s block. At his wits end, he visits a psychologist who tells him to take a vacation.

“But where can you go if you have no money and you don’t speak French?” he replies.

“What about Norway? It’s cheap and they’re practically Danish,” the doctor replies (It’s a joke my Danish friend Daniel would find hilarious, but my Norwegian friend Gjermund would reject outright.)

So Kasper takes the advice and starts doing some research about Norway. He comes across an epic novel by a Norwegian writer that tells the tale of a young man who falls in love with a girl who is engaged. Despite her father’s wishes she breaks off the engagement to marry the young man, and regrets the decision for the rest of her life.

Inspired by the story, Kasper plans a trip to meet the author.

I’ve been to the Copenhagen harbour where Kasper sets out from for Norway, and it’s captured beautifully and realistically – though in caricature-style -- in the film, complete with colourful, tall narrow buildings, beer-swilling, jolly Danes and vivid, watercolour skies, contrasting with the solid, chunky colours used in the animation.

After arriving in Norway, Kasper gets caught in the rain, and takes shelter at a local farm, owned by a family, it turns out, that is related to the writer whom Kasper was planning to visit.

He quickly falls in love with Ingeborg, the farmer’s daughter, who “tends to the chickens and romantically maps the stars above the farm,” and regains his inspiration.

“Ingeborg you changed my life. Ingeborg please be my wife,” he writes in a poem dedicated to her.

But she reveals that she, like the heroine in the novel that inspired Sigrid to come to Norway, is also engaged.

“This is exactly like when Kristen Laurens can’t marry Erilund because she’s engaged to Syran. But she breaks up with him and marries Erilund anyway in spite of her father,” Kasper says, excitedly recounting the plot line of the famous novel.

“Not exactly,” replies Ingeborg sadly, explaining that she has read the book, and has learned from the moral of the story and won’t make the same mistake.

Though her husband is killed randomly by a falling cow soon after, a series of post-man errors and goat incidents prevent the news from reaching Kasper and much time passes before the two are brought back together again and their romance is once again sparked – this time by the death of the writer, whose funeral they both attend, though perhaps unwittingly.

“You must go to the funeral,” Ingeborg’s friend tells her.
“Why?” she asks.
“Because she was your relative.”
“But she’s Danish!”
“When a relative dies, you go to the funeral, whether she’s Danish or not,” she is told matter-of-factly – a joke my Norwegian friend would appreciate.

And, thus Kasper and Ingeborg begin their happily-ever-after life together in true Hans Christian Andersen style.

Later, in the final coincidence of the film, the same friend who urged Ingeborg to attend the funeral, while travelling to visit the couple in Copenhagen, meets a young poet on the train who is on his way to Copenhagen to gain inspiration from Sigrid, who has become quite a successful writer.

So, like any good old-fashioned story, we have some clever twists along the way that eventually lead to a happy ending, and an intriguing exploration of coincidence and fate and how they affect our lives.

“Had it not been for the Danish poet and Sigrid Undset, a rainy summer in Norway, a slippery barn plank, a careless mailman, a hungry goat, a broken thumb and a crowded train, my parents might never have met at all. And who knows, I might still be a little seed floating around in the sky, waiting for someone to come and get me.”

This film won the Academy Award for best animated short and is definitely worth paying $2 at the NFB to go see. I recommend it!

Mother Night -- 1961 (In memory of Kurt Vonnegut)

My father first introduced me to Pink Floyd when I was about 11 years old.

I remember listening to it on my Walkman, lying back on the bed late at night. I expected rebellious rock-and-roll but instead I got helicopters and screaming, the sound of a cash register clanging open and heavy, deep soundscapes that reverberated in stereo sound from one ear to the other.

I thought: “What is this??” and wondered if I was too young to be listening to it. (I probably was)

But my dad had recommended it and that carries great weight between a son and a father, so I kept trying, kept listening, and slowly I began to understand, appreciate, and finally to love that album, and the band -- the kind of appreciation that some people call blissful, because it takes work to get there, but is always worth the effort.

I had a similar experience the first time I picked up a Kurt Vonnegut novel, also on my dad’s recommendation, and again, probably at too young an age.

I think it was “Slaughterhouse-Five” – a semi-biographical account of Vonnegut’s experience during the Second World War, combining science fiction, satire and black humour in a tale that mixes time travel and a first hand account of the aftermath of the fire bombing of Dresden.

As with Pink Floyd, my senses were bombarded and I was overwhelmed and I wasn’t sure I liked it. But I was stubborn, and somewhere about halfway through I began to see the beauty in the short sentences and clever vocabulary and simple but smart storytelling that painted such vivid pictures.

Since then I’ve read almost all of his novels – many of them several times. And in honour of his death just over one month ago at 84, I have just finished re-reading “Mother Night” for the third time.

What a brilliant book. I recommend all of Vonnegut’s work – you should read them and own them too – but Mother Night, as a novel and a concept, is incredible.

Vonnegut’s introduction to the novel begins as follows: “This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don’t think it’s a marvelous moral, I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

It’s about a man named Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American playwright living in Germany, married to a beautiful German actress named Helga Noth, prior to the Second World War.

The story begins in an Israeli prison where Campbell is awaiting trial on war crimes, and writing his memoirs, but as he tells his story the scene quickly shifts to Greenwich Village where Campbell lived-out the post-war years in obscurity, for the most part all alone, his family dead and his existence forgotten.

As the story develops, we learn that Campbell is considered a war criminal because of the work he did as a propagandist for the Nazis. He was an anti-Semitic radio broadcaster all through the war, and was responsible for some of the most fantastic, unbelievable lies ever fabricated about the Jewish people.

But we also learn that before the war began, Campbell was recruited by an American spy to broadcast secret messages – using strategic pauses and stumbled sentences as his means of delivery -- over the radio to U.S. agents, which he did consistently throughout the entire war.

“From the simplicity of most of my instructions, I gather that I was usually giving yes or no answers to questions that had been put to the spy apparatus. Occasionally, as during the build up for the Normandy invasion, my instructions were more complicated and my phrasing and diction sounded like the last stages of double pneumonia,” he explains.

Simultaneously, Campbell was the best spy the Americans ever had, and the greatest Nazi who ever lived.

The story raises big questions about truth and identity and whether an inherently good act can compensate for a lie, but in typical Vonnegut style it’s caustic and cynical and bitterly funny all at the same time, and provides no clear answers to any of the questions it poses.

I like the fact that the story begins with a moral -- a simple, humble truth presented more as a nugget of wisdom than as a point in a sermon, then sets about proving it in gentle terms through Campbell’s life.

I like that style of story telling. Vonnegut was a master at it, as proven in Player Piano, Sirens of Titan, Deadeye Dick, Breakfast of Champions, and many more.

It’s sad to say goodbye.

But here goes…

Goodbye.

Kurt Vonnegut
Born: Nov. 11, 1922, Indianapolis, Indiana
Died: April 11, 2007, New York

Spider-Man 3 (2007, director Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst)

I had such high hopes for Spider-Man 3. I looked forward to it for months, imagining how the third and supposedly final installment in the trilogy would build on the plot lines of the previous two, further explore the relationship with Green Goblin and delve into Spider-Man’s dark struggle with Venom.

There was so much potential!

And it was such a disappointment.

Now, to be fair there were some positive characteristics to this film, and I’ll start there just to avoid bumming myself out all over again.

The relationship with Harry Osborn – son of the Green Goblin who takes on the role after his father dies – is treated really well. Harry’s deep resentment and bitterness is still there – affecting his friendship with Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and eventually spilling over into his romance with Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst).

But as both Peter and Harry overcome their demons the relationship comes full circle and friendship eventually prevails. And this is nice to see, because through the series, despite their ups and downs, I always got the feeling they cared pretty deeply for each other.

Hmm. What else was good? Oh, the technology definitely drives this film. The fight scenes are amazing. The introduction of Sandman – though definitely an unnecessary complication to the story – provides some of the most incredible CG seen yet in the trilogy. One very cool scene in particular has Spidey and Sandman fighting in a sewer – with some very cool melting involved.

Also, Venom is done pretty well, despite being played by Topher Grace – Erik from “That Seventies Show” – whose character doesn’t exactly break new ground from that role.

But my overwhelming feeling walking out of the film was…huh??

My friends Jed, Ahmeda and Jared and I stood around for half an hour outside the Rainbow Cinema with puzzled looks on our faces, analyzing all the things that went wrong, and wondering if director Sam Raimi had forgotten to do test screenings before releasing the film.

I mean, at one point, meant to be the emotional climax, as a weeping Parker holds his dying friend in his arms and the camera zooms in on his emotion-wracked face – everyone in the cinema broke into spontaneous laughter. I was too upset at how painfully bad the scene was to actually laugh, but I couldn’t blame them for doing so – it was really ridiculous.

Parker cries about 10 times in the film, and it’s just too much.

I was expecting the film to really focus on Parker/Spider-Man’s internal and external battle with Venom – the evil alien force that gives him new powers but threatens to turn him into a villain.

This was a great opportunity to do what the Spider-Man franchise has always done well – explore the self confidence issues and personal struggles Peter Parker has always dealt with, providing a really interesting reflection to his super-hero side.

But instead, there’s a 20-minute montage in the middle of the film with Parker – sporting a cheesy new emo-style haircut and black clothes – strutting around John Travolta style, leering at girls and jutting his crotch out at creepy angles.

And that’s supposed to be how the Venom persona affects Spider-Man?? They could have done something so much darker, and so much better.

My solution to the problems of this film are as follows:

* Cut out some characters. Sandman, though I loved how your face got grinded away sandblaster-style against a moving subway, you were an unnecessary complication. My apologies to Thomas Hayden Church of “Wings” and “Sideways” fame, who actually did a pretty good job!
* Topher Grace’s role as Venom needs to be darker. He needs to be less annoying, but more evil.
* The whole Staying Alive montage needs to GO!

In good conscience, I can’t recommend going to see this film. But, on the other hand, the trilogy has become such a part of the pop culture fabric of this decade, that you might regret not seeing it on the big screen.

I leave the choice in your hands. But always remember, “with great power, comes great responsibility.”
-- Ben Parker

Artists for Action

There’s something good, something real and revolutionary and anti-establishment about artists and creative people and those with a desire to effect change, getting together to discuss how to bring about a better life.

It’s inspiring and grassroots, and never fails to leave me thinking ‘Yes! This is what we’re here for!’

That’s how I felt Tuesday night, spilling out onto Gerrard Street East from the cozy Abrams Studio at Ryerson University, after experiencing Artists for Action, a night of performances and discussion all on the theme of social justice, with the proceeds going to PEDRRU, a Ugandan NGO.

My friend Kathy Lewis organized it along with Sarah Fregeau and Irene Whittaker-Cumming, and I give them props for doing so because it’s never easy to get a dozen or so creative, artsy types to meet deadlines and arrive on time, let alone organize a creative, eclectic night of performances that somehow works coherently.

She pulled it off though, and for that I salute her!

After a brief introduction by Kathy and Antonio Cayonne, the night started with an emotionally charged performance by spoken-word artist Araya Mengaesha.

Spoken-word is one of those mediums that can really flop or fly – and in the hands of this capable young artist, it flew.

I was carried away by his first piece, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. It personified rebellion, describing an observer’s journey into an underground gathering of revolutionaries, the emotions, the stocky, nondescript speaker who brought the crowd to a crescendo with his message of freedom, and finally the smash and crash as windows were shattered and tear gas filled the room and finally, as a club comes down on the observer’s neck and he’s rendered unconscious, having scribbled down only two words on his notepad …

And perhaps the brilliance of this piece is the ending -– we don’t find out what those two words are, and we’re left to imagine what, for us, they would have been.

Thank you Araya. The delivery itself was a thing of beauty – intense, impassioned, poetic and from somewhere deep inside. I wondered how he could keep the tears from his eyes as he poured this out in words, pounding his chest for emphasis.

It brought me back to one of the first major events I covered as a reporter – a massive Ontario Coalition Against Poverty rally in the downtown core of Toronto. I was a small town journalism student and rode into Toronto on a bus with a bunch of activists –- and I came filled with big ideals about objectivity and journalistic integrity and whatnot.

But there were times throughout the day that I, like the man in the piece, filling the role of an observer, a recorder of events, couldn’t keep my fist from slamming punches into the air along with the electric crowds around me, demanding something better for those who have the least.

I came home with a new perspective on what it means to be empathetic and objective and a new appreciation for those who face off with authorities to make their voices heard.

Yeah, Araya, you captured the organized mayhem that occurs.

But beyond the spoken word, the night boasted a host of talented performers. Antonio and Dan Chapman-Smith prompted us to think about what art really is and how it can affect us and the world around us as a force for change.

Irene Whittaker-Cumming’s "Asante Sana" took her experiences working at an orphanage in Kenya and turned them into a modern dance piece that conjured up images of destruction, sorrow, connection to the Earth, rebirth, passion, progress and joy that made me miss Africa so, so badly.

She performed with Miranda Forbes, Sarah Fregeau, and Andrea Lithgow – all of whom expertly avoided the massive beam located smack in the middle of the stage area until you almost forgot it was there.

Then "Stephanie Street," a grim, intense, and challenging (five?) act play about helping the homeless and our often wrong-headed approach to doing so gave me some sober second thought. It was performed excellently by Warren Bain, Stephanie Bye, Michael Iliadis, Araya Mengaesha and Claudia Yiu –despite some minor technical issues.

Aviva Zimmerman performed what I think was part of a piece she put together for the Fringe Festival, called "Huffing Lysol," that was an entertaining and thought-provoking look at mass media and advertising and how the images we’re bombarded with affect our brains.

Ellen Hurley’s "Tipping Point" monologue took a different approach to the social justice theme, speaking with the voice of a dying planet and an Amazon rainforest that is facing a crucial juncture – a grim, critical mass moment at which the total destruction of the forest, the “earth’s lungs” will soon be unavoidable unless drastic change takes place.

And finally Antonio rounded out the night with some spoken word of his own.

Perhaps the most memorable part though, was the discussion that followed – artists and audience discussing the ideas and arguments that were rendered on stage, challenging each other to make a difference and find that ephemeral means of making art make a difference.

In a way, we were living out that theme of revolution, rebellion and grass roots movement that kept coming up throughout the night – and we personified, I think, that room full of rebels fighting against a dark, unnamed enemy that Araya described so well in the opening performance.

In some small way, we made progress towards that better life.

The Science of Sleep (Michael Gondry, 2006)

Sometimes, when I try to look at a star – I can see it clearly out of the corner of my eye, or I can catch it in my peripheral vision – but when I try to focus on it, it sort of evaporates and there just isn’t enough to focus on, even though I know it’s there.

That’s the way it is with my dreams too. I have a tendency to forget them immediately after I experience them. I wake up and the dream is there, so real I have trouble believing I didn’t just live through it – then in almost measurable increments it slips away piece by piece until it’s gone.

In The Science of Sleep, Stephane, a Mexican who returns to Paris to live with his French mother, has the opposite problem.

Since his childhood, his mother explains to a friend, Stephane, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, has “inverted” dream life and waking life – mixing the two together until he is unsure which is which.

The power of his imagination lends his dreams a sharp, vivid realness that he can’t escape, even outside of sleep, and that draws the viewer into the crazy cut and paste world of his imagination.

This tendency begins to complicate his life when he falls in love with Stephanie -- Charlotte Gainsbourg – his new neighbour across the hall, and begins confusing their real life interactions with those he has only imagined.

Michael Gondry, who expertly directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, along with a ton of music videos, takes us right inside Stephane’s dreams. And you feel like you’re there.

Using recycled, everyday materials like milk cartons, toilet paper tubes and cellophane, Gondry creates beautiful make-believe worlds that are so dream-like they help me recapture pieces of the ones I forgot.

There’s a beautiful scene where Stephane and Stephanie become excited about a project they want to work on together with old packing materials and old toys she has around her apartment. Their enthusiasm is infectious, as they describe how cotton balls could become clouds, pieces of cellophane could serve as the sea and how a small wooden boat could be filled with a forest to create a “vegetable Noah’s Ark,” Stephane explains breathlessly.
And as they run around picking up materials and planning it out the scene comes to life in simple, child-like animated goodness.

I got excited too and found myself planning my own little animated film sequence and convincing myself I was actually going to do it (mine involved a Lite-Brite).

His favourite dream involves a TV show where he is the host, camera-man and director, and the people in his life are the guests.

Stephane’s dreams run his life – to the detriment of his job cutting and pasting generic calendar components together – his strange pseudo-relationship with Stephanie, and even his day-to-day activities.

He never really outgrew the imaginary friends and imaginary life he created for himself when he was a kid, and as a result the cute factor wears off quick and he becomes somewhat frustrating to watch.

The aesthetic appeal of this film makes it worth watching – it really will blow your mind in a manageable way – but the story is a bit weak, the breakthrough you hope Stephane will make never really happens, and the ending is unsatisfying.

That being said it’s a feast for the senses, with dialogue flipping seamlessly between English, French and Spanish, beautifully rendered dream sequences and a meshing of fantasy and reality that will have you saying “what the..?” in a good way.

Why the Banff Mountain Film Festival helps me survive Toronto

I’ve been inspired for three days now, full of dreams of the mountains and adventures and freedom, thinking back to places I’ve been and those that capture my imagination and call out to me to visit.

It’s pretty much the way I feel every year for a week or so after the Banff Mountain Film Festival comes to town. I’ve been going to the festival for years now – five of the last six I think -- and have sought it out in Kingston, Barrie and Toronto, depending on the location closest to wherever I happened to be living at the time. It’s always been worth the drive and never fails to leave me dreaming of a better life.

That’s how I feel now, after my brother Ben and I attended the festival last Saturday at the Bloor Cinema.

The festival ran three nights in a row here in Toronto, with a different lineup of adventure or outdoors-inspired films each night, running over about a four-hour span.

The roster typically includes a mix of six or seven Canadian and international films, ranging from a couple of minutes in length to an hour or so, and there are usually a couple of slightly eccentric entries that don’t fit neatly into the genre, but usually still work pretty well with the overall theme.

There were three films this year that really captured my imagination and have occupied my thoughts for nearly a week now.

The first was called “Asiemut,” a film made by a young couple from Quebec as they travelled by bicycle through (check my geography) Mongolia, China, Tibet, Nepal and India – 8,000 kilometres – and got through thick and thin together and came out stronger on the other side. A truly inspiring film and a really likeable pair of Quebecois (not that that’s unusual.)

The second, and this fits in the category of “Adventure?? Film” is called “The Ride of the Merganser. Mergansers are a diving duck that call, among other places, the northwestern portion of the Great Lakes region of Canada and the U.S. home.

They’re pretty elusive and as such there isn’t a ton of footage of them in their natural habitat – and there’s definitely nothing like this. ROTM, a 15 minute film, follows a female as she lays eggs, hatches her ducklings, and urges them one by one to make the long leap from the nest down to the pond below – all in the space of 24 hours.

It’s so cool! Clever narration, a smart soundtrack and brilliant use of remote cameras make this one of the most purely entertaining films of the festival, for sure.

But my far-and-away favourite was undoubtedly “First Ascent: Didier versus The Cobra.”

Most of this hour-long film takes place in Squamish, B.C., and centres around Didier Berthod, a Swiss rock climber, and his attempts to climb “The Cobra” – a section of rock split from top to bottom by a narrow crack just large enough to get a toe and a couple of fingers into in places, and possibly the toughest crack climb in the world.

But the documentary-style film quickly becomes about more than achieving that one finite goal. Didier, who is living at a youth hostel and cleaning rooms to pay for his stay so he can hang around and climb, is instantly lovable, and the film-maker does an incredible job of bringing us into Didier’s life and showing us who he is, beyond being a world-class climber who appears to have been born on a rock somewhere.

At one point he tells the camera “I’m a Christian, but not a very good one,” and you can’t help but admire his ability to wear his heart on his sleeve.

The film follows Didier as he attempts, over and over again, to scale The Cobra (which had never been climbed), to the heartbreaking moment when he fails on his very last attempt before he has to fly home to Switzerland.

The story then takes us to Europe, where he climbs the toughest crack-climb in Europe, but only after Didier – a pure traditionalist -- removes the bolts that someone has driven into the rock to make the climb easier.

Then, after a year, he comes back to Squamish, and your pulse begins to quicken as you anticipate, finally, his success on the still-unclimbed route.

But like a quick-draw coming loose it all comes crashing down on his first day back, when he injures his knee and learns he won’t be climbing for months.

Then Didier has an epiphany, explaining that he had convinced himself his desire to climb The Cobra, to be the first, was the natural result of his love of the outdoors and the connection he feels to the rock.

But now, he says, he realizes it was all about “the glory.” He wanted to be the first. He wanted to be the best, and God used the opportunity to humble him.

“It’s as if He was saying ‘No Didier, it’s not for you,’” he says. And there were moments, at “the crux” of the climb – a one-finger hold that transitions to a slippery overhanging right-hand hold, where he felt as if the angels were gently pushing him down, because they knew it wasn’t his time.

“So, instead, I am here to be God’s witness,” Didier says with his typical, simple wisdom that runs deep.

Ahh man, it’s a beautiful film, and even writing about it makes me want to go out and climb a rock, or paint a picture or write a poem or move back to Banff.

See, that’s why I’ve driven halfway across the province to attend the BMFF – because it always breaks my heart and makes me cry and in the words of the great Wade Davis, helps me “understand what it means to be human, and to be alive.”

I’m getting carried away but you get the idea. If you like the outdoors, or have the tiniest remnant of an adventurous spirit left in your black corporate soul, or if you just need to escape this damn city and you don’t have the means to get out – do yourself a huge favour and go to the festival next year.

You won’t regret it.

The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880)

Fyodor Dostoevsky said he would die happy if he could finish "The Brothers Karamazov" because he would have expressed himself completely.

Having accomplished that goal, he must have died satisfied, leaving behind a book that has left a profound mark on the literary world, but also on people’s lives. I personally know of two people whose spiritual journey towards God has been launched largely due to this book.

I must admit that it didn’t have the profound spiritual impact on me that is has had on others, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying most of it – at 1,045 pages in paperback, I found it at times to be cumbersome both physically and mentally. But through the vast majority of the novel I was fascinated and challenged.

The Brothers Karamazov is the story of three brothers, their relations with each other and with their father Fyodor Karamazov, who is murdered in an apparent parricide.

The youngest son, Alyosha, is portrayed as the saintly or angelic figure. The second brother, Dmitry, is a sensualist driven largely by his passions and emotions while the oldest, Ivan, is a critical-thinking, but bitter, intellectual.

After being separated for various reasons for years, the three brothers find themselves living in their hometown in close proximity to their landowner father who is portrayed as devious businessman, buffoon, nefarious womanizer and cruel glutton who rarely takes the feelings of his three sons into account. This tendency of his is the driving force of the book, leading to his romantic pursuit of Grushenka, a woman whom his son Dmitry is also passionately in love with, his underhanded dealing with Dmitry in regards to the estate of his dead mother, and ultimately to his own murder.

Factor into the equation the presence of Smerdyakov, Fyodor’s apparent illegitimate son who has grown up in his household, raised by a servant couple that have become the boy’s adopted parents.

His strange upbringing his turned him into a nasty, scheming young man who plays a key role in the family affair that eventually ends with Fyodor’s death.

Like all of Dostoevsky’s works the book is a fascinating exploration of the human mind. Typical of his work, descriptions of countrysides and architecture are almost entirely absent, while the writer spends his time describing the geography of the minds of the characters by painstakingly documenting their thoughts and conversations.

I have to say though, despite all of its literary and religious importance, this book simply didn’t grip my heart like "Crime and Punishment" or "The Idiot" – two of my favourite books of all time.

I think that may be because those books had one central figure that the story revolved around, and shortly after picking up those books I felt well acquainted with them to the point where I could almost predict their thoughts and actions.

I felt this to a lesser degree with Alyosha, and later Dmitry, but I certainly didn’t feel the same level of intimacy or understanding of their character that I did in the previous two.

It may be because the cast of characters was simply too long -- like "Ocean’s Eleven" and "Ocean's Twelve" – the story was entertaining and interesting but there were just too many people floating around and not enough development of the ones I really wanted to get to know better.

That being said, it did take me a long time to read this book, and I got through it mostly in small chunks late at night before falling asleep. If I had read large sections over a week or so I may have a greater appreciation for the project as a whole.

But also, there are sections that I found pretty tedious – including about 75 seemingly out of place pages in the middle of the book in two chapters titled “The Elder Zosima” and “The Teachings of the Elder Zosima.” In the first, the life of the revered elder of a local monastery is set down, in the second, his – or likely Dostoevsky’s – religious views are hashed out in a long, long sidebar to the story.

There is also a long but rewarding chapter called “The Grand Inquisitor” which has been published on its own and is considered an important literary text by many Christians, atheists and intellectuals.

The chapter – a “poem” written by Ivan, an atheist, and shared with Alyosha, a Christian, portrays an interrogation by the “grand inquisitor” of Jesus Christ after he has returned to earth during the Spanish Inquisition, and has been arrested.

The inquisitor, a Catholic cardinal, argues that Jesus can’t return now because his presence would interfere with the goals and mission of the church.

While this chapter, like the others, is not directly tied to the plot, it is a beautiful piece of writing on its own and warrants more attention than I gave it.

All in all though, it’s filled with intriguing insights into the Russian mindset and into man’s seach for God, and the way our passions – both love and hatred – drive our decisions and actions and cause us both happiness and pain, and how the line between the two is often indistinguishable.

Without a doubt, TBK is recommended reading for anyone with an interest in literature – but it’s a pretty big commitment and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it as an entry point to Dostoevsky’s work. But it is typical of his style, and definitely won’t disappoint anyone who has enjoyed his other works.

Wade Davis is smart and cool

I've kicked around a few dusty corners of the globe and I like to think I've explored some places that few other people will ever get to. And I've always prided myself on the fact that I'm a traveller, not a tourist. It's a concept that has become a bit of a cliche in recent years as ecotourism and adventure travel have become mainstream concepts -- but I've always tried to live it out as a way of life whenever I'm in a foreign culture, whether it's Regent Park or Nouadibou.

I've worked hard to meet people in the various places I've been, and find out what life is all about for them -- what they believe, how they live, who they love and why. To me these have become essential elements of any adventure or cross-cultural experience.

But Wade Davis takes the concept to an entirely new level. As an "ethnobotanist," writer, filmmaker, scholar, and the only Canadian National Geographic Explorer in Residence, he's pretty much the best when it comes to exploring other cultures and finding out what makes them tick.

I had the pleasure of watching an early release of his new four-part NG series: "Light at the Edge of the World" which is airing on Wednesday nights on that channel, and was suitably awed by his ability to crawl inside the skin of foreign cultures. In this case, he is studying vanishing cultures and efforts to preserve them and pass-on ancient traditions. The quest takes him to Peru, the Himalayas of Nepal, the Canadian Arctic and Polynesia.

I had the chance to interview him and find out a little more about what makes him tick. Click here to read my full story on "Light at the Edge of the World."

Rocky Balboa (2006, written and directed by Sylvester Stallone)

My dad and brother and I bonded over the Rocky movies. When I was a kid, and as a teen, and through the times we didn’t have much in common, we always had Rocky. He was this common denominator that we could all rally behind and cheer for – an underdog with an unstoppable heart whom we believed in.

Every time (and there were many in the first five films) Rocky dug himself out of some low point, and began to mount a comeback, whether it was on the beach training with Apollo Creed or screaming “DRAAAGO!!” from a snowy Russian mountain top, we were there rooting for him.

Who wouldn’t be?

So I have a bit of a personal investment in the whole collection, and I must admit I was a bit anxious about Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone’s newest installment.

Let’s face it, Sly, God love him, is pretty old to be getting back in the ring, and unlike Rocky 5, the climax of this film is a full-on classic Rocky-style bout. Despite my deep faith in Balboa’s abilities, before the film I thought to myself “this is bit of a stretch.”

But the beauty of Rocky is that like every true hero, he doesn’t act within the laws of reason that govern the rest of us. In the film he tells his son, “I stopped caring what other people thought a long time ago,” and if you’ve been there since the beginning – you don’t doubt the truth of those words.

The film begins with Rocky living in the same old neighbourhood where we first met him. Adrian is dead – and oddly there’s no explanation as to how she passed -- he’s estranged from his son, and Uncle Paulie –- still boozing, smoking cigars and working at the meat plant -- is the only family member still close to him.

Rocky owns a restaurant where people come to meet the champ and hear some of his old fight stories, but his life is pretty empty and he spends most of his time mourning Adrian and feeling sorry for himself.

“You’re walking backwards,” shouts Paulie, in one of his trademark outbursts.

In what appears to be an attempt to exhibit some of Stallone’s acting, ahem, talents, much of the film is dedicated to exploring the depths of his grief. It’s a bit much, to be honest, and super cheesy and predictable, involving a woman, her tough son, and Rocky’s efforts to reclaim a purchase on life through helping them . Meanwhile, he’s also working to rebuild the fragile connection with his son Rocky Junior (Milo Ventimiglia – Luke’s nephew from Gimore Girls) who predictably feels like he’s living in Rocky’s shadow.

But Stallone definitely channels Rocky. He’s as he always was – clumsy with his words, cheesy with his humour, gentle and earnest but willing to let his temper loose when necessary. In short he’s still the Rocky we love and for that I salute him.

But like the film, I’m taking too long to get to the action. The premise of Rocky Balboa is one of its most brilliant qualities.

Mason Dixon, the undefeated world champ with 30 wins and no losses (played well by real-life boxer and former undisputed light-heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver) is hated by boxing fans because he’s never gone 10 rounds with an opponent and seems to be lacking the “heart of a champion.”

A sports network puts together a computer generated simulation fight between Balboa and Dixon, and Rocky comes out the winner by knockout.

The fight generates a lot of interest, and gets Dixon’s promoters thinking about doing it for real, since there are no worthy opponents left out there for Dixon anyway and it might be a way to win some fans.

Rocky, meanwhile, starts thinking about boxing again and manages to get a license, after giving a rousing speech to the unwilling Pennsylvania State Boxing Commission about how he’s earned the right to decide whether he’s ready to fight.

“This is who you are Rocky. This is what you do. Fighters fight,” Maria, played by Geraldine Hughes, tells him, convincing him to accept the “exhibition” challenge.

But anyone who knows Rocky knows he doesn’t stand for half-assed measures, and he puts his all into training his ancient body to duke it out with the world’s best.

Enter the training sequence – a trademark Rocky feature that my friend Phil and I were anxiously waiting for. I couldn’t help but cheer when it began with a quiet ‘da da da da, na na naa na na naa,’ leading into lots of classic Balboa workout shots and ending beautifully but predictably with the champ running up the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. So, so good.

The film ends with the fight scene, of course, and it’s a classic heart wrenching, emotionally –charged Rocky moment that seals the RB’s status as a full-fledged member of the franchise. Like the crowd in the film, I wanted to jump to my feet and usher Rocky out with a standing ovation as he said farewell to his fans.

A couple of things jumped out at me that set this installment apart from the others, particularly one through four. For one thing, Sly is just old. There’s no doubt he’s in amazing shape for his age, but his aging body is showing some mileage. It literally looks like one of the massive sides of beef he’s been known to spar with, and at times it’s a little painful to watch.

And also, the fight scene just isn’t as believable as in the earlier films. The punches just don’t look like they’re landing, and there are fewer of the close-up glove-to-face smashes that can’t be faked.

And while the film has a grainy quality that hearkens back to one through three, for some reason Stallone decided to incorporate a few cheesy camera tricks, like slow-motion, and an over-used technique during the fight where everything goes black and white except for the blood, which is of course, bright red.

It’s a bit much, but doesn’t take away from the overall quality of this farewell film in a dynamite series.

Rocky fans will love it, but first-timers probably won’t appreciate what it’s all about. You need context to fully get this one, but for those of us who have that history, it’s awesome!

Weird observations: Duke, a stalwart member of Rocky’s entourage ever since Apollo Creed died and he moved to Rocky’s corner, comes out of nowhere to make the briefest of appearances at a news conference – apparently as Rocky’s trainer -- where he says something like ‘a great fighter never loses his punch.’ And that’s it, we don’t see him again. UPDATE*** I've been corrected. Duke does come back. He helps Rocky train. There's a great scene where he tells Rocky that Dixon is faster then him, can out-box him, and is in better shape than him "So what we have to do is build some blunt force trauma," he tells him. And shortly after the Kettlebells make an appearance.

Also, Mason ‘The Lime’ Dixon looks a little flabby, and one of the fight announcers makes reference to it saying something along the lines of “Dixon’s not in the best shape we’ve seen him in,” but there’s no other reference. Maybe Tarver didn’t hit the gym hard enough before the film and Sly thought he had to reference the fact.

Paulie’s best line: “What’s the matter, you pissed because they took down your statue?”