"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.