MONDOmagazine

Mixed Emotions for the National Ballet’s mixed program

March 8-16 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts

By Leandra de Valois-Franklin

Dancers of the National Ballet of Canada hung up their tutus and gave their tippy toes a rest for the latest mixed program presented by artistic director Karen Kain. Featuring the most contemporary, commercial repertoire the company has seen in years, the company was noticeably desperate to fill seats and redeem the increased costs of production at the Four Seasons Centre, employing hip marketing schemes portraying the seductive Aleksandar Antonijevic as the alpha-cock of the Rolling Stone’s based Rooster. Despite the best of efforts, the program failed to deliver satisfaction as audience attention spans turned on, tuned in, and quickly dropped out.

Quebec choreographer Marie Chouinard, a recently appointed officer of the Order of Canada, opened the program with 24 Preludes by Chopin (1999). The work, which explores the tension between the formal and emotional, challenges traditional movement and music associations by deconstructing Chopin’s romantic score, combined with animalistic movement that included more strutting and preening than Rooster itself. The 17 dancers transition between a series of small groups and ensemble pieces, with undulating, liquid torsos in see-through black leotards with strategically placed bars of opaque fabric.

It was shocking to see a work so overly spiced with contrasting dynamics and arbitrary gimmicks, including a random recital of the musical scale by one dancer (in French), and an impromptu game of soccer. I’d like to think that there was some metaphor intended, but I’m more inclined to believe that Chouinard is simply taking the piss out of the audience and her commissioners. If there was indeed humour and irony in the anticlimactic work, its relevance was unclear, and regrettably failed to do justice to Jean-Francois Latour’s poignant piano solo. The sole redeeming quality of this hodgepodge was Guillaume Côté’s half-naked body pogo-ing up and down, and a short solo in which a dancer spins with increasing centrifugal force, appearing as a cross between a grotesque butoh dancer and whirling dervish; portraying qualities which uncannily paralleled my dizzy, nauseating sentiment towards the rest of the work.

Sandwiched between 24 Preludes and Rooster was Jiří Kilián’s Soldier’s Mass (1980), an intensely sorrowful and hopeful tribute to unknown soldiers which finds relevance in the current war climate. Kilián’s affinity for choreographing seamless transitions from closely structured unified patterns to looser configurations allows him to evoke images of a community of male soldiers huddled tightly in trenches, and as swaying targets spread out in the distance. His talent also lies in the ability to convey deep emotion through minimal movements, allowing music and choreography to assume equal responsibility. Czech born Bohuslav Martinů provided the score, which included baritone soloist Joseph Song Chi’s haunting accompaniment of the Toronto Mendelssohn chorus members. Unlike Chouinard, Kilián’s work creates a sense of anticipation and momentum which builds to a powerful climax, and creates an atmosphere in which the dancers embody their characters with clear intent.

Last and by far least was Rooster (1991), British choreographer Christopher Bruce’s irritatingly lyrical take on the battle of the sexes in swinging sixties Britain, to a soundtrack of eight nostalgic Rolling Stones hits. Cocky men in colourful Austin Powers attire and demure women in far less exciting garb performed stylized, exaggerated choreography and gestures meant to mimic Mick Jagger’s trademark strut, in a kitschy modern jazz style which lacked the impressive turns, tours and other tricks that the company is capable of performing.

Although the majority of the program didn’t impress, there is much to say for the versatility of the dancers, who conquered the difficult task of retraining their bodies to perform contemporary styles so different from the classical idiom embedded in their muscle memory. It was a clever marketing scheme on Kain’s behalf to lure audiences with a marketable draw like Rooster, while including Soldier’s Mass as the true masterpiece. Results of her efforts were evident in sold-out shows and an influx of dance discussions by bloggers just discovering dance. Hopefully this new inexperienced audience, which applauded confusedly at every unnecessary point throughout the performance, will remain loyal to the National Ballet, so that it can satisfy its quota without selling out its long-enduring integrity. I continue to stay hopeful for the remaining dance season, but I also recognize that you can’t always get what you want.

Taxi to the Dark Side

Directed by Alex Gibney
THINKfilm, 2007
by Jess Skinner

Afghanistan, December 2002: a taxi driver known as Dilawar is hired to drive a trio of men out of Yakubi into the desert. Northern Iraqi forces stop him, and the quartet is sent to American controlled Bagram Air Force Base, on somewhat spurious accusations of possessing material for detonating bombs. Taxi to the Dark Side uses his detainment and eventual murder (explicitly labelled as such by a coroner’s report) at the hands of American officers. In contrast to the Lynndie England case, in which prisoners at Abu Ghraib were subjected to surreal, sexually perverse assaults, Dilawar’s fate involved nothing less than primitive brutality. No arguments about “severity” and “nature” of abuse can hold water; he was quite clearly beaten as far as his body could stand. The film follows his fate as an exemplar for the current state of US policy towards overseas detainment. The nation’s visible history of xenophobia and racism has, in the new war zones of the 21st century, led to a chilling attitude. If something does not happen in our land of the free, human rights need not apply.

The institutions and environments in Taxi to the Dark Side have a notably Orwellian quality; the bureaucratic subversion of language and policy is leading to isolated, borderline fascist facilities of incarceration. The definition of torture probably should have been established from the outset. The most bewildering moment in the film (or possibly of any I have seen in the Iraq War documentaries) comes when an interrogator, having been instructed bluntly to “yell” at a prisoner for two hours, admits he berated and ranted at the man with the topic being Elvis Presley. This is a film mostly involving anecdotes, but a thesis comes to rise: despite this being the information age, disturbances in communication and language have led to a breakdown of humanity. We practically cut our soldiers lose on the other side of the world and expect them to behave with civility and decency?

The film allows the “abusers” — those in charge of the military facilities — their own words. They do not defend themselves as such, merely try to illustrate the overwhelming nightmare they were placed in. This is no excuse for what happened to Dilawar and others, but these soldiers are not rednecks getting their rocks off on assaulting poor foreigners. More accurately, they are scared young people, in a land they do not understand, reacting savagely in the clusterfuck.
It is hard to argue with the brutal images here, some of them shown publicly for the first time. As a polemic, Taxi to the Dark Side is often angry and righteous, but undeniably composed. Therefore, it achieves its collection of goals. Its construction is typical; talking head interviews in place of narration, quotes keeping a steady flow of point-counterpoint. However, despite winning the Oscar for Best Documentary, it is not extremely innovative or significant in cinematic terms. The subject matter is incendiary and relevant, of course, but director Alex Gibney’s previous film — Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) — left a greater impression on me and is more deserving of recognition amongst the post-Michael Moore wave of political docs.

Don’t Forget to Pack a Wife!

By Claire Brownell

In the spring of 1980, the Dead Kennedys released “Holiday in Cambodia,” on Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables. It was a year after Vietnamese occupation toppled Pol Pot’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for the massacre of one to two million people. A commentary on the hypocrisy of young, university educated liberals who claim an appropriated understanding of poor minorities, the song suggests such people take a holiday in Cambodia and see if they still think life in the ghetto is poetic and cool.

“And it’s a holiday in Cambodia
Where you’ll do what you’re told
A holiday in Cambodia
Where the slums’ got so much soul.”

So I’m sitting here in a ritzy tourist cafe in Siem Reap, listening to Frank Sinatra and drinking a banana shake, with a krama (traditional Cambodian scarf) tied around my neck, and reflecting on the beautiful irony of that song in 2008. I’m sure that in 1980, it would have been totally inconceivable to the Dead Kennedys that Cambodia would become a place where the type of people they deride in the song would actually voluntarily take a holiday. But it has. And they do. And I guess (gulp) I’m one of them. And it’s very possible that Jello Biafra would call me up from his office at the Green Party to tell me I’m a spineless liberal for what I’m about to write, and it’s very possible he would be right. Cambodia’s got problems. Big problems. Problems so big that my middle class white Canadian brain can’t even begin to wrap itself around them, even though I’ve been here for a month and a half. But goddammit, the slums here do have soul. There. I said it.

My friend Maggie has come up with a representation of Cambodia as experienced by a backpacker in pie chart form.

Cambodia: Composite Parts

• 78% building shit (I hear most people call it “development”)
• 15% livestock
• 20% dust everywhere, especially my lungs
• 32% consistently fantastic food
• 17% sassy rude kids selling stuff, followed by realizing that they’ve outsmarted you by 55% by making you buy something you don’t want and have also just stolen 18% of your wallet
• 67% garbage on fire
• 19% being amazed that amazingly beautiful, mindblowing things has become normal
• 12% heartbreak (amputees, prostitution, genocide museums, etc.)
• 9% blackouts caused by someone tripping over the one extension cord that powers all of Cambodia
• 14% being a celebrity to children under the age of six
• 77% almost getting hit by a Lexus, a rickshaw, and a cart selling seashells at the same time
• 97% paying less than a dollar for almost everything, including large bottles of whiskey
• 99% lounging
• 87% forgetting everything I ever learned in school, including how pie charts work

Now that you have a general idea of how things work here, I’m sure it’s easy to infer that the excess in Cambodia is just as shocking as the poverty. It would be fully possible to travel the high roller way, see only the major sites in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, and not even realize that Cambodia is a poor country. I like to think that traveling dirty backpacker style and my (shortlived) career working at a bar run by a Khmer family have given me a bit more insight into the other side of Cambodian life (Sidenote: Khmer is the term for the Cambodian language and ethnicity, “Cambodian” refers to the nationality). For one thing, Khmer people are tough. Cambodians would be in hysterics over the Canadian definition of a hard life (and, in fact, laughing at Westerners seems to be a national pastime). Many work two full time jobs and also go to school nights and weekends. Kids learn to drive motorcycles and work as tour guides or sassy salespeople before Canadian kids lose their training wheels. Toronto teenaged thugs who think they’re gangsters should try talking to a Cambodian street kid for twenty minutes, and they’d realize their $300 Akademics jeans plus the half quarter of weed in their pocket would support the average Cambodian for almost a year. For another thing, the country and people have been through so much that I’m going to attempt to summarize the collective Khmer attitude I’ve observed in the following way: So much shit has happened, so much shit is still happening, so much shit will, by all laws of probability, continue to happen, that we might as well chill out on our hammocks and make the best of it while we can. Land mines, sex tourism, relatives killed in the Khmer Rouge genocide, children unable to afford school: these things exist, and we’re pretty fucking mad about it, but right now, let’s get drunk and go to a wedding.

These contrasts are most visible in Phnom Penh, the capital city. Ten times scarier than Gotham, a billion times more interesting than Toronto, and often strangely reminiscent of Montreal with its flats with winding staircases, Phnom Penh is definitely the coolest major city I’ve been to so far. It’s also only recently become a place you can travel without worrying about some political party tossing a hand grenade into a crowd or exchanging gunfire in pickup trucks. Tourists can go to the former Khmer Rouge prison, S-21, which had 20 000 inmates and 7 survivors, in the morning. Then they could rub shoulders with dresssed up rich Khmers at the mall, head to the slums for some one dollar fried rice, barter over whether two t-shirts are worth $3 or $2.50 at the Russian market, and see an entire pagoda plated in silver at the Royal Palace. They could dodge the traffic composed almost entirely of rattletrap motorbikes competing for space with Toyota Land Cruiser SUVs and Lexuses (Lexi? What the hell is the plural of Lexus?) to catch a spectacular sunset over the nuclear green Boeng Kak lake, then get some $5 cocktails at a riverside cafe with all the money they saved on t-shirts. None of it makes any sense, and none of it holds any justice. But in the words of one Khmer who ran a travel agency by my guesthouse, “Don’t worry, man. Just go get stoned, why not?”

You can see how a wide range of types of tourists would be attracted to Cambodia. There are the middle aged package tourist types who mostly want to check Angkor Wat off their list. At the other end of the spectrum are the scum of the earth sex tourists who are there for the unabashed and widespread prostitution. Then there’s everyone in between. Want to get baked all day by a stunning river? Head to Kampot. Backpacker who’s squandered your carefully planned budget at the bar? There’s a job for you bartending in Sihanoukville, or teaching English in Phnom Penh if you’re willing to stick around for a couple of months. Don’t mind a drunken bender in between seeing the most stunning sights on earth? Siem Reap has an entire street called “Bar Street.” Everyone wants to take a holiday in Cambodia. And very soon, even more people will, but they won’t be the young, ten-dollar-a-day budget travelers. There’s a joint Cambodia-Thailand visa in the works. A national park in Kampot is being bulldozed to make way for a giant casino and theme park. The entire beachfront bar strip of the backpacker ghetto Serendipity Beach in Sihanoukville is being torn down to make way for resorts in the next month and a half. So get there soon, because Cambodia might not have much soul for long.

Autechre
Quaristice
Warp, 2008

by Bryan Hopton

Listening to meandering eight-minute soundscapes was part of what made Autechre’s past work so exciting. It was like listening to your own acid trip. The haunted ghosts of synths crackle into sight and then fizzle away suddenly, drums clatter and clank away like a million broken robots, and mountains of unidentifiable noises mount up on the listener from every direction. These sounds were, at times, both strikingly beautiful and disturbingly morose. They always managed to set themselves apart from their IDM contemporaries by doing something different.

So, here’s why I don’t like the new album: It’s fucking BO-RING. I expected this kind of shit from Aphex Twin, but even that guy managed to deliver on that totally unnecessary Analord thing. Autechre were one of those acts that I always looked to for fresh sounds, genre-bending sound collages of clicks and rattles and bleeps and bloops. What we have here is… well, it’s exactly that, aside from one thing: There’s nothing interesting about this record. It sounds like Autechre have, for whatever reason, decided to follow up one of their best albums (2005’s Untilted) by playing it safe and sticking to their old tricks. It’s not enough to just shorten your songs and then include three times as many on the album. That’s not exciting. That’s lame.

Alas, Quaristice does, indeed, find Autechre sticking to their guns. Granted, that’s not always a bad thing, but, from a duo who made a name for themselves by throwing their past albums upside down with a whole new set of sounds, pulling out old tricks just doesn’t cut it. Opener “Altibzz” sounds like a lame throwaway from the last Squarepusher disc; “The Plc” is just boring and repetitive – which makes no sense in the context of a genre like IDM. “Perlence” is a piece of FruityLoops preset heaven that could be replicated by any number of aspiring laptop musicians who are bent on achieving utter mediocrity.

Really, the whole album just keeps going like this. It feels like some random demo that I’m sure the dudes at Warp have received thousands of times by now, something an 18-year-old bedroom IDM nut concocted in between English Lit classes at some community college. It just doesn’t sound like an album from a group that could potentially be referred to as one of the pioneers of an entire genre. It doesn’t feel like you’ve got the blazing new sounds from men that could be called two of the most influential electronic musicians of the past decade.

Based on the reactions I’ve seen so far, it could be said that my opinion here is an unpopular one. So be it, then: if it’s wrong to expect innovation from a band supposedly known for being innovative, then I guess I’m wrong. I suppose, then, that I’d also be wrong for feeling like this album is one of the biggest letdowns that I’ve heard in the past year or so. If you’re new to Autechre, do yourself a favour and check out their earlier stuff. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I recommended this to somebody with a straight face.

André Charles Thériault

sings the songs of André Charles Thériault

independent, 2008

By Allana Mayer

For a review of André Thériault’s (pronounced like the “Tario” in “Ontario”) debut album, I could probably just the recycle the words I used to describe seeing this ginger gent play live a few weeks ago. His performance was roughly a live redux of the recording as it plays, and not a half-bad one either. They’re the same songs he’s been peddling around the greater Toronto area for several years now, and every audience member that bought a CD proclaimed that it was about damn time they got recorded. I’m inclined to agree.

André’s is an energetic voice, full of optimism. It’s hard not to find an interesting dichotomy there, between the wise-beyond-his-years emotion with that barely-legal timbre. There’s a sound of his voice nervously cracking and warbling that hardly registers, but endears when it does. And the most enjoyable spots are his wordless hums and whoas and ahhhs, when his voice shrinks to a mere complement of his guitar, rather than detracting.

Sure, it’s almost textbook guy-with-guitar, with moments of banal sentimentality about friends interspersed with poetic imagery and a resigned sort of feeling, with “I may never find love but I have great friends” as moral to the story. And repeated motifs can be a bit grating, though not from the repetition itself: “What loves me?” as album opener and closer is acceptable, though repeated several dozen times, while “Let’s recycle the night” gets irritating after about ten shots.

But if you’ll kindly look past the generic lyrics, you find guitar work that often slips from favourable into downright impressive. Having never made it past the G-Am-C-D progression myself, I won’t belittle his skill. There’s none of that one-note-per-measure shit — this music is as lush and full as single-instrument recordings can be, with healthy finger-picking and beautiful variations. The sequence of “Rough Times” is particularly chilling. Even more heartwarming — pardon the lame play on words — are those few mentions of cold dark winters that remind me this is a hometown Canadian boy, and that sometimes Toronto can produce earnest musicmakers intent on producing beautiful work.

By Isaac Mills and Miles Baker

Isaac’s Book
Ex Machina #35
Written by Brian K. Vaughan
Pencilled by Tony Harris
Inked by Jim Clark
Coloured by JD Mettler

I’d read a number of Ex Machina trades a while ago, and really enjoyed the stories told, but I was concerned about how a single issue would hold up. My fears were quite groundless.

The whole of the story is Mayor Hundred (ex-superhero, current mayor of New York) seeing a ghost of a black slave, and having to see to it that his spirit is laid to rest. They have the standard flashback scene where we get to see the Mayor as the admittedly bumbling superhero that he was, which is always fun. We have a mystery to be solved, a ghost story, some degree of the political wheeling and dealing that is standard for this comic series (but nowhere near the same amount as is the norm from what I’ve read of the series; a good thing to keep a nice, light single issue), and my favourite part: the dropping of comic terms into “real life” situations. Talking about “secret origins” and E.C. Comics, while the other characters just sit back without having any idea what the guy is talking about. Story of my life right there.

The artwork by Tony Harris is great; everything is very natural and comfortable. There’s an interesting balance between the simple and complex with the backgrounds, and it’s very good for keeping your focus on what’s important. If there’s some action going on, the background gets more focus and you “see” the picture, but when the dialogue starts up, so do the moody inks, and we listen.

Speaking of dialogue, it may be the best part of this comic. The stutters, humour, intelligence: it’s all real conversation, and also conducive to a good story. You know, not Bendis style — which is neither conversational nor does it help any kind of story. This is a very clever book, it always is, and you should check it out.

Miles’ Book
Afterburn #2
Written by Scott Chitwood and Paul Ens
Art by Wayne Nichols and Nick Schley
Red 5 Comics, 2008

Oh, Afterburn, I really want to like you, but I don’t think it’s going to work out. When we first met, your beautiful glossy cardboard-stock cover impressed me. It was so shiny and felt good in my hands and Matt Busch’s cover was so well rendered.

And your opening pages were wonderful. You explained to me your post-apocalyptic future while also giving me some nice information about your main character. I might be a little sick of post-apocalyptic futures right now, but yours is interesting enough, even if I don’t believe the science of it at all. But it didn’t matter, you had a funny little flashback scene where our main character looks like he’s about to fight a gang of mutants, as seen here:

Aww. That’s great. But then things turned about the time when that one new character punched the shark in the face. It’s not that it isn’t hilarious, it’s just that it made no sense. The shark probably wouldn’t move up like that. Sharks also weigh a lot and live in a fluid — that man must have the strength of She-Hulk to hit that hard while still in the water himself.

From there things just got very confusing. You put your main character in an identical mask as another character and I could no longer tell them apart. Putting all your characters in identical masks is a bad idea when you’re trying to lure new readers into the plot. They also look like they are going paintballing, not stealing treasure.

And then a whole lot of stuff happened that I didn’t understand and your pacing went to hell. Like what happened to that Korean girl in the red hood who made off with the suitcase? Because we saw her do that and then the next time we saw her she was some other guy’s prisoner. I think you missed a scene.

You tried to make it up to me with some nice bonus features at the end, but it’s just not enough. I’m sorry Afterburn, but you are not a good comic book.

OR Why I Am Angry For 60 Days Every Single Year

By Jenny Bundock

Well, it is March, which can only mean one thing; it is springtime in Toronto! Most people love spring because it means that summer is coming – and we love summer so much that we have given March/April/May a free fucking pass to do whatever they feel like as months, and still come off as some people’s “favorite season” running on the platform of “at least we aren’t winter.” Well I call bullshit on spring. I’m going to go ahead and say it: spring fucking sucks. Here are all the reasons why I hate spring.

It smells like shit, everywhere.

You know your neighbor with that little annoying dog? Well that dog has been shitting on top of the snow all winter, and every other day, the winter quickly melted and refroze, and buried that poop under layers and layer of attractive powdery snow. You see, Winter, realizing that there was nowhere for that poop to go, was responsible enough to adequately neutralize the poo by freezing it, and then covering it. Unfortunately, spring is not so responsible. Spring, among other things, means thawing out whatever winter froze, and that means all that poo. This is where the spring plan stops, though. There is no system like dropping leaves in the fall to cover and break down the poo; there is no hot drying sun to harden the poo like in summer; Spring simply thaws the poo, re-hydrates the poo, and then moves on to more melting and re-hydrating elsewhere, leaving us ankle-deep in 4 months of dog shit, everywhere we go. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Nasty mud.

Continuing on with the wet, thawed out poo, and the reckless melting of spring, we come to the second thing I hate about spring, which is all that rotten mud. Spring mud is the most offensive kind of mud, because it is a mélange of poop, rotting organic matter, sand, salt, and freezing cold water. This mud is everywhere too: even when you think that a place looks dry, it’s probably secretly 8 inches of stinky sludge, laying wait just under the tender re-growing grass. It takes twice as long to go anywhere in the spring because the threat of nasty mud is so real, that no one dares cut across any laws, fields, un-paved surfaces in general, gravel driveways, or traffic islands. Sick, sick mud could be anywhere. It’s like a gooey minefield everywhere you go.

Pastels.

Why is it that anytime the sun starts coming out, and Easter rolls around, everyone feels like wearing baby blue and peach everywhere they go? I feel like I’m at Baskin Robbins every time I go for a walk. It’s mint green to my left, pink to my right, eggshell bags and shimmery eyeshaddow to match: it’s all far to precious for me, precious and poorly planned – especially with all the mud that is around.

Daylight savings time.

This is adding insult to injury. Take everything I have just said, and then make me get up an hour earlier to experience it. Fucking sadistic. And thank-you-very-much, Bush Administration for making that happen for me RIGHT before finals. Nothing like pulling an all-nighter working on an assignment and then having to hand it in an hour earlier because of some farmers in Utah.

The April snowfall.

Every year, every single year it snows in April. At least once. Every year. Does everyone hear that? EVERY YEAR! So when it happens this year, in April, I don’t want everyone to run around like a douche saying “oh my god, it is snowing in April, I can’t believe this!” It hurts me. Your ignorance towards your surroundings brings me physical pain. April has an average snowfall of 6 cm for the month. It does not take a genius to work out that in order for us to get 6cm on average in April, snow will have to fall from the sky. That is why they call it snow-fall and not snow-appear.

The emotional instability.

When that snow does fall from the sky that one last time, everyone always acts like it is nature trying to personally offend them. I am with you there, though I wouldn’t say that it is nature’s special little treat, as much as I would say that this is just another great reason to hate Spring. Do the other seasons do this? Does summer suddenly drop ice on you? Does winter blow a sandstorm through the city? Does fall suddenly change all the trees back to green for 3 days, just because? Who wants to be friends with someone who jerks you around this much: warms the place up, wakes up all the hibernating animals, lets all the grass start growing, and than just for one last gasp, drops snow on everyone. This whole season is like that asshole in your grade 10 gym class that used to fake toss you the basketball like 10 times until you finally gave up and looked away, and then he threw it at your head.

Dead baby birds.

There you are, enjoying your day, and then, oh, what is that on the sidewalk just ahead… a pinecone? A pile of dirt? Re-hydrated poo? Noooo! It’s the shriveled and broken corpse of a baby bird! Just one of Spring’s many “dead thing” offerings. With spring comes the birth of many helpless animals, and with helpless animals come accidents, predators, and lots of cute corpses. Again, what kind of sadist loves a season that causes the untimely death of so many cute little things? Mind you, with spring also comes everything having sex to make those baby things – which some people might think is great all in all – but I could go without seeing 8-12 pigeons having sex on my way to school, or the flies in my kitchen getting down on my toast. It’s like a big sick vermin orgy.

After all this, I’m sure you understand why I lift my left eyebrow in disbelief when anyone, anywhere says that they “love spring.” They are liars. It is like saying that you “love the line at wonderland before the rollercoaster:” no you don’t, you just like that it means you are on your way to the real season that everyone loves for real: SUMMER. Let’s not kid ourselves any longer, if it looks like a dead baby duck, and quacks like a duck that just stepped in poo-infused mud, then it’s probably a shitty season.

Your friend in complaining about everything;

Jenny

Paul Lacey knows very little about comics, but he’s always willing to learn. Between tutoring sessions with MONDOComics’ Tom Kerr and scouring the back issue bins for Runaways issues, Paul has made time to be shown pictures of two comic book characters and he will decide who would win in a fight. His answer may not be the popular one — or for the right reason — but hey, it’s Paul’s call.

This month’s matchup, Chamber Vs. Invincible

Paul says: What the hell is that?! Chamber’s power is to explode his own face?! In any other call, Chamber would lose by default for looking like such a damn fool, but Invincible’s costume is so lame that I can only assume he’s about as powerful as the Putties from Power Rangers or the Foot Clan from Ninja Turtles. Since Putties can be made to explode just be touching the right part of their foam chestwear, I’ll guess that Invincible would probably die pretty quickly from Chamber’s exploding face attack. Chamber for the win.

Justice League: The New Frontier
Directed by David Bullock
Warner Premiere, 2008

By Miles Baker

I like The New Frontier comic even more than our glowing review published a couple months ago did. There is a lot to like about it: complex story structure, evocative art, spot-on dialogue, engaging social commentary. I like it so much, I even own it in an oversized, expensive-ass edition. So, I was pretty excited to watch this direct-to-DVD adaptation of a really great comic. This is the second DVD in a series of taken-directly-from-the-source film adaptations of well-regarded comic stories.

From looking at the box, I knew going in that a 75-minute runtime wasn’t going to be enough to encapsulate this story. That kind of length smacks of a bunch of executives sitting around a board room, where one of them reads from a half-baked sociology study from Ivy League Prep about how children can’t sit for much more than an hour. And since we make superhero stories, and those are only for kids, we should make it only an hour. And here’s the problem with that: this movie is dark for a kid’s movie. It opens with a suicide, it even has a PG-13 rating. Also, the source material is aimed at adult comic-book readers who are going to be the primary audience to buy this DVD anyway. And after watching it, and seeing how much they had to cut out, I’d say that if you weren’t going to do New Frontier right, why did you do it at all? Because the runtime is so short, the plot is forced to move at a crazy-fast pace and the wonderfully slow build of the comic is completely lost, along with many plot threads and character moments. I know animation is expensive, but another 30 minutes really would have helped this movie out.

But there is a lot of good here. Mostly, in how it looks. It really looks like a Cooke comic brought to life. So many shots are taken right from the panels, and they have the most impact. The colour and characters just look great and the animation itself is pretty good.

But while the characters look good, they aren’t terribly well developed. There are a lot of characters in this story, and in the runtime every character basically only gets ten minutes. That’s just not enough. And the one character who should have the most developed story (and who also gets the most screen time) is hobbled by a flat performance. To name names, that would be David Boreanaz as Hal Jordon. Part of the problem is that he’s crippled with having a lot of expository lines, but even then he’s just the same no matter what he’s talking about.

Finally, there were a fair amount of fanboy moments for me: Neil Patrick Harris was excellent as Barry Allan/The Flash; all the Batman scenes; and they kept Wonder Woman’s Amazonian physique. So, it’s worth owning if you’re a collector like me, but for everyone else I’d recommend renting it or calling me up to see if I’ll lend it to you. As a warning, you will be forced to talk about it with me afterwards.

Be Kind Rewind

Directed By Michel Gondry
Focus Features 2008

By Ian Passy

I am willing to admit I am not easily impressed. I am cynical, jaded, and generally disappointed by all things. In fact my top ten list of personal favourite films only has five entries, and only two of them I have watched more than once, and one of them is Transformers: The Animated Movie. Despite all this, however, somehow French director Michel Gondry has charmed me with his quirky oeuvre. Even from his days as a lowly music video director, his work stood out as something of value, something that had an ounce of personal expression. The same can be said of the few feature films he has directed including his latest, Be Kind Rewind, starring Mos Def, Jack Black, and Danny Glover. However, there is something lacking in this film, something not quite right.

The premise seems to function well enough. Mos Def’s and Jack Black’s characters recreate a variety of well known blockbuster films for the patrons of a video rental store after Jack Black destroys the current library while the owner, Danny Glover’s character, is out of town. Comedy and a bit of drama ensue as more people become interested in watching and also being a part of these remade (sweded) films. (I would like to go on record to say that sweded is a flat out stupid term and the person responsible for its infliction upon society should be shot.) Tempers soon flair as the remade films grow unmanageably elaborate. At the same time the future of the beloved movie store/leading rival of Lions Gate Studios is questionable thanks to anti-piracy lawsuits and lack of legitimate (any) income.

The story is rather bare. It mainly serves to legitimize Mos Def and Jack Black running around shooting shoddy but humourous home movie versions of films such as Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, and a bunch of others I cannot remember because there where only a few seconds of them. This is unfortunate because the remakes are the best parts of Be Kind Rewind. The impromptu props and interaction of the characters trying to portray other characters is quite engaging, whereas the characters in the “real” universe of Be Kind Rewind lack any real interest or depth. I find it hard to care about Jerry, played by Jack Black, who is an obnoxious idiot, and Mike, played by Mos Def, who mainly sits around waiting for life to suck as a direct result of knowing Jerry and then whine about it. The most appealing main character, Mr. Fletcher, played by Danny Glover, does his best to add some humanity to the story by doing a remake of himself as Henry Sherman from The Royal Tenenbaums.

Despite appearances, it pains me to dislike Be Kind Rewind. I had hopes when I first heard of this film. I thought the premise was great and the cast was tolerable. I even hoped Gondry would have been able to tame Jack Black into something watchable like Stephen Frears did in High Fidelity. In an age where ownership of intellectual material is so ethereal and constantly challenged, Be Kind Rewind could have been so much more but it stumbles and falls flat. I really hope this is not a sign of things to come for Gondry, merely a momentary hitch in his step. After watching a film like this, I believe it is time for the filmmaker to cut back on the Youtube videos of him solving things with his feet and get down to business.

Wow! A preamble! This takes me back, I’ll tell you. I know, I swore off of these things a couple of weeks ago, but sometimes a man’s just gotta perambulate, and this would definitely be one of those occasions. See, the way I figure it, what with “Cripes, it’s Gripes!” running this week, the Lifestyle section — while still awesome — may seem just a tad bitchy. And to be fair, it is; that’s what the article’s all about, after all, but that’s not necessarily what we’re all about.We here at Lifestyle, despite our griping, still take time out to notice the little bits of Awesome we find in everyday life. And that’s why I’m writing this preamble, to use my power as editor to plug something incredible.

I first came across the following on the Wikipedias the other day, and was immediately impressed with the project. First of all, Lego stop-motion animation has long been an interest of mine — my own ill-fated Lego Hamlet ultimately having been put on indefinite hiatus due to my lack of organizational skills (to paraphrase The Beastie Boys, “I lack the skillz to pay the billz”). So when I see it pulled off right, it makes my weary heart smile. What I found was a two-part, 14-minute music video based on a metal-rendition of Homer’s The Illiad. This is why we have an internet, people! Plus, hijacking a Wikipedia article to promote one’s own project is just GEAR! So yes, while I realize that the music of Blind Guardian may not appeal to everyone (though really, if you can’t get into this song, question your soul), I would say that, for anyone with an interest in Legos, Greek mythology, music, animation, or simply the redefinition of the word Awesome, the following two links are absolute must-sees (not a Rick Roll, honest!):

And Then There Was Silence Lego Video pt.1
And Then There Was Silence Lego Video pt.2

Special kudos go to the character design of these Lego men (and women). The smugness of Paris, the absolute hard-core look of Achilles, and that scheming look on Odysseus’ face — all priceless. Yes, there are some issues with choppiness, and the fact that the video is split into two halves is annoying, but if even one quarter of internet DIY projects were this good, I’d be ready to state that we are truly living in the Best of all possible worlds.

Sam Linton
Lifestyle Editor

Paul Butler’s Collage Party

March 9-12, 2008 @ JMB Gallery, Hart House

By Kerry Freek

Noises at Hart House’s JMB Gallery on Sunday, March 9: chatter, clatter, slicing, CBC Radio. Two sorts of ‘bringing together’ here: 1) Collage itself is indicative of community, with elements and media coming from different backgrounds to become one chaotic (and possibly cohesive) piece. 2) As exacto knives make deft slices to the innocent pages of used magazines, the public (collage/craft enthusiasts, parents, children, friends, art students, etc.) mix and mingle with local artists and each other to produce a room full of far-out hybrids and other cut-and-pasted wonders.

Paul Butler’s Collage Party is a traveling participatory art event not unlike the worldly uncle you see once every few years. Butler, Winnipeg artist and the director of the web-based The Other Gallery, has been organizing collage parties all around the world since around 2002. Collage Party has made appearances in New York, Winnipeg, Montréal, Los Angeles, Berlin and Scotland – and it’s already been to Toronto at least twice before (at MoCCA in 2006; The Power Plant in 2002).

This month, as JMB Gallery joined the increasingly tally of Collage Party hosts, professional input came from artists such as Micah Lexier, Derek Sullivan, Roula Partheniou, Maura Doyle, Tyler Clark-Burke, Sandy Plotnikoff, Anitra Hamilton, Kristan Horton, Dave Dyment, Zin Taylor, Kerri Reid, Katie Bethune-Leamen, and Jon Sasaki. The artists met for a few days beforehand to transform the gallery into an experimental workspace, and the public was invited to contribute for four days following the artists’ attack.

Wednesday, March 12, just before closing time: a beautiful disaster, the good kind of mess. Paper shreds populate the floors and more creations (including an inspired mélange of Stéphane Dions, and a flower exploding with petal-bombs) plaster the walls, and we’ve become a lovely mosaic via scissors and glue.

Collage Party was part of the U of T Festival of the Arts which runs March 3-20. For details on the rest of the month’s activities, visit www.arts.utoronto.ca. (All photos courtesy of JMB Gallery)