Studies + Considerations

I am spending the summer immersing myself in reading all things psycho. I came across a statement which, if you can get past the academic tone, provides a key interpretation of how the relational approach (which is what I'm studying) is divergent from classical psychoanalysis' emphasis on a one-person psychology.

"The relational-perspectivist approach I am advocating views the patient-analyst relationship as continually being established and reestablished through ongoing mutual influence in which both patient and analyst systematically affect, and are affected by, each other. A communication process is established between patient and analyst in which influence flows in both directions. This implies a "two-person psychology" or a regulatory-systems conceptualization of the analytic process. The terms transference and countertransference too easily lend themselves to a model that implies a one-way influence in which the analyst reacts to the patient. That the influence between patient and analyst is not equal does not mean that it is not mutual; the analytic relationship may be mutual without being symmetrical."

- Lewis Aron, A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis

The author proceeds to develop this distinction between relational and classical (two-person vs. one-person psychology) as it pertains to intersubjectivity (the mutual awareness of what the other is thinking/feeling in a therapeutic environment and how this field of awareness affects both the patient and analyst). The quote above is a brilliantly distilled proposition which may seem commonsensical on first reading, but with a broader understanding of the history of psychoanalysis I can see how revolutionary a statement this is.

Could Everyone Stop Using Venn Diagrams When You Don't Have a Better Way To Express An Idea?

No Such Thing As a One-Ended String

I am beginning a small bout of learning, if that is possible, into what is called "string theory" (there is a nice article here, which summarizes the basics at the bottom). I'm learning about it, because there is so much controversy directed at it. On the one hand, it is a contender for The Theory Which Explains Everything (Ultimately). Yet, there is (after over 40 years of theorizing) no documentable proof of its existence. This would be a question of trivia were this theory not so heavily influential - and invested into - within academia (particularly in America's most elite universities), where there is growing concern that this theory has become a self-propelling conceptual vehicle which is capable of using unanswered questions of its existence to justify its existence.

I once chatted up someone who revealed himself to be a retired physics professor, and the subject of string theory came up. He smirked and said dryly, "String theory is a cult, waiting for its Jonestown."

How could I not take that as a cue to learn more?

The Town vs. Animal Kingdom

When Ben Affleck's The Town came out, many praised it as a powerful crime drama/action film. And yet, the shine seems to have come off of that project, probably as a result of people chasing the hype and actually watching it.

First, let's discuss its poster. In recent years, I've become sensitive to bad marketing. A good example of this is the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall: the ad campaign (in Toronto at least) consisted of anonymous black and white bus and streetcar ads, with hand-scrawled "I HATE YOU SARAH MARSHALL!" (and the like) written on them*. In short, the campaign was cheap-looking, lame, and soured any potential expectation I had for the film - it wasn't until much later, at my wife's urging, that I caught it on DVD and found it to be one of the comedy highlights of the year.

Similarly, the poster for The Town (displayed here) is a marketing mystery to me: it looks like a horror movie. It's directed by and stars Ben Affleck, yet the poster is covered in evil nuns with automatic weapons. In short, I don't get it: sure, it's a "serious movie" but what were they thinking? Was it reverse psychology? Who knows. If it were me, it would be a close-up photo of John Hamm licking Ben Affleck's unshaven face, with the caption: "Holy shit! It's the guy from MadMen with Ben Affleck! (They also shoot weapons!)"

Then there's the film itself. From a technical point of view, it's very impressive. Affleck's direction is solid. The performances are gritty and engaging. It's free of stunt-casting. Camerawork, editing, sound: great. But when the credits rolled, I realized what was wrong. What's wrong is that the story's been done a hundred fucking times before - and at least once by Michael Mann. So, for me, there was nothing being risked as a viewer because, having watched more than one crime drama in my life, there were no surprises in the script. Believe me when I say that I wanted this film to be as good as it promised - and, in fact, it is good. Just not as good as it clearly could've been when you take into account all that it has going for it.

So what did I want The Town to be? I wasn't sure...until I saw the Australian crime drama, Animal Kingdom on DVD. It has all the grit, tension, and complexity of The Town, with less overt style, and no actors recognizable to North American audiences (outside of Memento's Guy Pearce). It's poster? Have a look:

It's like a Jeff Wall photograph. And in the middle of it all is the crafty look on the face of actor Jacki Weaver (nominated, it should be noted, for Best Supporting Actress at the upcoming Oscars).

Animal Kingdom is a film fluent in the crime drama language - it even shares some of the tropes of The Town (the nervous druggie robber, the dutiful police detective) yet never once feels as if you are watching a re-treaded story. It is unpredictable and the performances are naturalistic and nuanced. It is its lack of artifice which keeps us watching, whereas with The Town, each successive car chase weighed it down with Hollywood cliché. Where the latter certainly carries legitimate tension, the former is quietly disturbing and takes a more nihilistic view of the cops and robbers game.

The good news is that both are available for your perusal on DVD, and both are extremely watchable. Neither will ultimately disappoint: it just depends on where your expectations are set. I feel that Animal Kingdom is the film The Town wanted to be.

* I admit I'm particularly sensitive to ads which don't make it clear that they are ads, especially if they look like actual public messages of hatred.

Guilt By Association

An article I wrote back in March of 2010 ("I'll Show You Stupid") is getting a lot of steam, it seems. Nice to see new visitors. It's nice to look back at something I've written in the past - the good stuff at least - and see that my instincts were well targeted. In the case of this particular article, it was about the dangers of denigrating (political) others on the basis of how intelligent they come across; the danger was that such actions back-fire more often than not. It mentioned a certain former governor of Alaska.

I've been thinking and discussing the subject of elitism quite a bit lately. There are many subtleties in the way we use the word "elite", but when used in its current populist political form, what people are particularly referring to are those who are educated. Plain and simple. I've spent many an hour, day, year, working with and speaking to people who are very educated and worldly, and I must say that they desperately need to get organized if they are to live up to the hype of being the human whippets they are made out to be.

This last October, Toronto voted for a populist mayor - a champion of the surrounding suburbs - who played the "elite" card quite a bit. Regardless that the man is a millionaire from a millionaire family, that he went to Carlton University, he was able to parlay the us-versus-them thing quite well. Helps that he coaches football and is built like a linebacker and probably looks exactly as he did in high school. Thing is, by all rights, he is an elite. Meanwhile, the target of his vitriol, the downtown intellectuals that I hang with (I swear I don't do it for this reason) - the people who think bike lanes are safe and that public transit is important - are positively victimized by the very thing they are accused of. You see, I think the intelligentsia failed Toronto, just as they typically do most civilizations: where were they (hell, we) during the ten months of the pre-election hype? Where were they when a candidate capable of beating Ford needed to be picked (I don't think anyone really supported Smitherman - for *'s sake, he adopted a child six months before the election, how responsible is that?). Well, the "elites" were chattering amongst themselves, refuting Ford's populist bullshit as just that. What everyone forgot is that elections are competitions and without a competitor we ended up with the bully from high school as our hall monitor for the next four years.

The point I'm trying to make (casually, and without credentials because this is a blog and I'm not a journalist) is that the so-called elitists are too busy looking at subtlety, too busy drawing examples from the history of civilization to actually stick their necks out and actually pick a candidate. In short, intellectuals hate making decisions and would rather prefer to show off how much they know about things. That's how we end up with Rob Ford as mayor. That's how we ended up with Stéphane Dion leading the Liberal party, or allowing members of the Reform Party to vote twice (if they belonged to both parties) in the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and Reform Alliance parties. The intellectuals - the so-called elites - were busy sitting on the sidelines trading notes, impressing each other with witty barbs.

And this is why I have a stake in the whole "elite" argument. In a sense, yes, they are the enemy. Not because they want anything, or that they are organized enough to have an agenda in the first place, but rather because they don't know what they want for anyone other than themselves and most of them are too afraid of being politically active. In other words, they should know better, should do better, but they don't. And as a result they doom the viability of the very life they live.

On Elitism

There is a lot of anger these days being directed towards a group known as "the elites". I'm not sure who they are. Sometimes I am part of them. Sometimes I'm not, but standing apart from a crowd, with their torches, storming toward the castle gates which protect "the elites".

The elites are the rich.

The elites are liberals.

The elites are the well-educated.

The elites are neo-conservatives.

The elites are the well-connected and entitled.

I keep hearing this term: the elites. And when I step back I think of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge movement, and how they ultimately targeted people who wore glasses. And when I say targeted, I mean murdered.

When I hear, in that angry, spittle-on-the-microphone voice - elites - I think of the ease with which we can take a non-specific swath of individuals from various classes, ethnicities, and educational backgrounds, and clump them together almost by magic. And they suddenly become something standing in the way of common sense, progress, Providence. Those fucking elitists.

I can take everything that makes your life hard - the year-to-year complexities of living in a society with others - and compel you to believe that if it wasn't for some small band of conniving intellectuals things would be better, simpler.

I can blame the elites.

Doris Lessing:

There is a certain social process that is known and very visible, but perhaps not acknowledged as much as it should be. It is that one where a new idea (or an old one in new form) is accepted by a minority, while the majority are shouting treason, rubbish, kook, Communist, capitalist, or whatever is the valued term of abuse in that society. The minority develop this idea, at first probably in secrecy, or semi-secrecy, and then more and more visibly, with more and more support until...guess what? This seditious, impossible, wrong-headed idea becomes what is known as "received opinion" and is loved and valued by the majority. Meanwhile, of course, a new idea, still seditious etc. and so forth, has been born somewhere else, and is being cultivated and worked out by a minority. Suppose we redefine the word elite, for our present purposes, to mean any group of people who for any reason are in the possession of ideas that put them ahead of the majority?

If holding certain beliefs or regarding some aspects of life as being too complex to reduce to unconditional conclusions sets me apart from the crowd, and if this standing apart-ness is sedition, and if this is what it means to be an elitist, then I am an unrepentant elitist.

Movies & A Book: Some of The Best Things I've Witnessed in 2010

Here's the best of what I've seen this year. I haven't seen everything. You may disagree with what I have seen. This is life.

FILM:

Inception

Go ahead. Try. Try disagreeing that this is one of the most technically (and perhaps conceptually) elaborate mainstream Hollywood productions released in years which also happens to work as a "movie" that a wide variety of audiences would enjoy watching.

There has been a backlash against Inception. I don't know how or why this is - perhaps it was over-sold as a deep "puzzle-solver" film, which it is not. And yes, the NYT's A.O. Scott has a point in his comment that the film's literal depiction of dreams are lacking psychological heft (outside of Marion Cotillard's performance as DiCaprio's wife). In any case, something has caused a revolt against this film and I say this revolt is missing the point.

Inception is, generally speaking, the most watchable, the most fascinating film of 2010. You are allowed to hate it.

A Prophet

I am a huge fan of Jacques Audiard, a French director who has always rewarded the viewer with films (Read My Lips, The Beat My Heart Skipped) that balance passion with style. With A Prophet, Audiard expands his canvas, creating a gritty, novelistic masterpiece on-par with The Godfather (yes). The story concerns a young incarcerated Muslim who slowly rebuilds himself from within the treachery of prison life, rising from under the thumb of a vicious mob leader to become his own person and create his own empire. Epic, patient, and in places extremely violent. People will be referring to this film for years to come even if it has not really made a mark in North America. Again, a masterpiece.

The Eclipse

I realize this Irish film was released in 2009, but it didn't get here until now. A compelling ghost story which eschews the two-dimensionality of ghost story films. It was around the twenty-minute mark that I realized it was a film which was going to confound my expectations (expectations based upon years and hundreds of similar plot lines): it wasn't going to squander what it was and fall prey to hackneyed cliché. A gorgeous, touching, ultimately humanistic film with a stand-out performance by Ciarán Hinds as a grieving father of two children who must swallow his pride to escort a loud-mouthed Aidan Quinn through the motions of a book tour of the small coastal city of Cobh, in County Cork. A sublime achievement by director Conor McPherson.

Notable: Winter's Bone - see it. It's on DVD now. Like A Simple Plan, it's a self-contained "rural thriller" (ugh) with a chilling undertone of barren hopelessness. Unlike A Simple Plan, it's uncomplicated which is what gives it more of an honest strength. Exit Through The Gift Shop is the perhaps best film made about art and the art world that I have seen - like Inception, it's not trying to be deep, just smart. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World blew me away because I expected it to be weak (perhaps because all the publicity photos inexplicably used a static image of Michael Cera standing against a fucking wall...imagine if you will, trying to sell Star Wars with a picture of Mark Hamill sitting cross-legged in the desert - sounds awesome, eh?). Not only was it not weak, it was the strangest case of "I don't know why I love this movie but I really do". Painstakingly, sublimely Toronto-centric (which, unlike the inexplicable promo photos of Michael Cera, shouldn't be factored into explaining why it didn't fare well at the box office) and wildly imaginative - those two things have never met before...oh but wait, I forgot the perfect companion piece: Kick Ass - also shot in TO, and also exceedingly expectation-defying (although the climax is kinda drawn-out). As far as performances go, Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and Colin Firth (The King's Speech) stand out, along with Winter's Bone's Jennifer Lawrence, and Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit (who, at 14-years, shows huge promise as an actor).

BOOK:

I would have said "BOOKS", but due to work and school I haven't read anything published this year (that I can remember), with the exception of John Vaillant's The Tiger. Lucky for me, since it is without doubt one of the best non-fiction titles I've read in years.

The Tiger is a meaty real-life tale of vengeance by the titular beast, in the winter hinterland of the Russian Far East (which the author calls, paradoxically, "the boreal forest"). Vaillant describes an environment historically, politically, and biologically unique, inhabited by hardened outcasts. The shadow of a predator male tiger, known never before to attack without cause, creates a wave of dread throughout the land, with only a small band of volunteers to figure out the mystery. Vaillant provides wave after wave of fascinating detail - examples of how man and beast have evolved throughout time, how human and animal behaviour have worked in similar paths - that by the end of the book you feel as if you should have a credit in Ethology. This is truly a page-turner and I cannot recommend it enough.

Taking a Breath

For the first time in a few Decembers, I approach the end of the year without a knot in my stomache, without a brain scrambled by the to-and-fro of this and that. This is not to say that I'm not busy, that I do not (as I type this) sit with a few plates spinning above my head. This is also not to say that I do not face an onslaught of tasks once the merriment of New Year's Eve has ebbed.

I feel compelled these days to start putting things in perspective. Perhaps this is what happens when you turn 40 - perhaps I am being cliché. Seeking context and sketching narratives seem like writerly enough goals to aim for, but even as a writer there are a lot of things - tangents, curves, frays, tears - to reconcile within that task.

A strong influence stems from my current study of psychotherapy, which requires that I be in therapy also. You find yourself relating a story from your past - from your childhood, from your 20s - and you find yourself saying something you realize you haven't really mentioned to anyone before. Not necessarily secrets, but impressions of events. Sometimes events themselves. It allows you to discover how unintentionally secretive we can all be.

I have been struck by as often as I have been able to dodge the things thrown at me in life. Sometimes you don't have a choice: I think that's one of the first things you learn, but the hardest to reconcile. That is, if you don't want to subscribe to fatalism (which isn't to say that everything should boil down to some atheist/libertarian screed). Ultimately, life has but one author, and if you do not have a hand on the pen there is a problem.

It is thus, in the spirit of pen holding, that I try to take some time over the next while to add to the picture of my understanding of my self, with the aim of broadening that understanding (as opposed to solipsism) so that the rest of the (human) world may not be as strange and foreboding as it can seem.

Perhaps, some day, we will see that we are all artists.

Book Review: Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Sometimes things just line up in such a way that you can't help feeling they were put there on purpose. Early this month, as part of a course I'm taking, I went to a weekend retreat, held at a secluded compound by the Credit River. It was a bit eerie, because many of my dreams take place in expansive compounds: wherever I go, even if it seems I'm outside, I just have to look up to see that there is a roof, or some sort of enclosure to remind me that I am not free. So, what book from our library did I take with me at the last minute? Why, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, of course. What I didn't realize is that much of it takes place on a compound...but I'll get back to this.

I've not read any books by Ishiguro - I haven't even seen the movie adaptation of Remains of the Day. That said, I did work on Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music In The World, an adaptation of one of his short stories. I'd heard good things about Never Let Me Go, and had always meant to read it. With it being released as a film recently (I don't think it did that well, despite the critical praise), and since I needed something to read during my time away, I thought it would be a good pick.

Never Let Me Go concerns the story of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy. It's told from Kathy's perspective in the present. She is a carer, who drives from centre to centre, visiting those she looks after. Very soon we are introduced to their beginnings, as children, in a place called Hailsham. It's an isolated educational enclave, somewhere in England, where the students live, go to school, and grow up. But there's something a little odd about it all. Perhaps it's the isolation from the rest of the world. Something in the way some of their guardians regard them. All too soon, their sun-dappled childhood in Hailsham becomes something which haunts them as they grow into young adults. It's practically all Kathy can use to mark the passing of her time.

Within these reminiscences, we are introduced to Tommy and Ruth, who become the foundational friendships Kathy clings to through adolescence, regardless that Ruth oscillates from friend to enemy - a colourful rather than careful individual who becomes a voice of danger in the fog of their relationship.

The magic of this book is the skill with which Kathy's perspective is written. There is a purpose for Hailsham, for their being there. There is a reason she is a carer. Never Let Me Go is a capital-H haunting novel, inhabited by people who are slightly cold but reaching out, never quite managing to touch a meaning they hope is there. I can't say much more without spoiling things, not that it's a book laden with surprises, so much as layered with subtle, sad observations. A beautiful book for a rainy day.

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (ISBN: 978-0-676-97711-0) is available at an independent bookstore near you, or at various online retailers.

I Don't Want To Know

As a writer, even though I am not part of any sort of literati, I am still plugged into the lit scene. You need to be if you want to understand the general to-and-fro of any industry you are interested in becoming a part of (same goes for TV, music, theatre, etc..). That said, I must make an admission. I am making this admission because I think there are a lot of people like me out there who feel the same but are reticent to admit it.

Here goes: I don't take any particular interest in the life of the artist outside of his or her art.

When I read a book, I don't care if an author comes from the East Coast and studied journalism, had a drug problem and now lives in a shed with a mastiff. It's not that I don't care about this author personally, it's that these facts shouldn't have anything to do with the book that I am about to read. I should be able to pick up the book, knowing nothing about said author, and be able to read it, enjoy it, be fully affected by it, without substantially missing something due to a lack of familiarity with the author's biography.

And yet, when you are culturally plugged-in (and by this I mean, you check out industry blogs, trade mags, etc.) there is so much white noise about the artists themselves that it seems divergent from what it is they are supposed to be doing: their work. We can talk about Picasso's passions, but 100 years from now there will probably only be discussion of his work - your work is the only thing left after you and everyone who knew you has died. And if people are still talking more about you than your work after this point, then I would think the quality of your work was overstated.

Would knowing that Stephen King battled drug addiction offer an insight into some of his writing? Yes. But, my point is that if that insight is necessary in order to fully appreciate a piece of work then there is a problem. The work doesn't work if you need a biographical cheat sheet to inject context into the material.

I think Bryan Ferry is an fantastic vocalist - and I don't want to know anything more than that. Nor the details outside a director's films, nor what inspired the playwright to write her play. I've got my own shit going on, thanks very much.

Ephemera is for journalists, fanzines, and those working on their Ph.D. The general public should not feel inadequate if they pick a DVD or book off a shelf, sit down in a theatre, or load a song without being prepared with supplemental information not contained within the medium which contains the work. The work inevitably has to stand up for itself. I write this for two reasons: first, with the likes of the AV Club and traditional print/TV media clamouring to add as much web-based context as possible to every article, there's a growing sense that - for the everyman - if you aren't savvy to the smallest details of each artist's passings and goings, you are nothing but a tourist. Secondly, embracing social media to a claustrophobic degree, we can now read endless commentating on authors reading their work for a live audience!...something no one really asked for outside the publishing companies themselves and perhaps the authors' parents. Let's face it: most authors can't read aloud to save their lives - it's not their specialty.

There are reasons for digging deeper, but that's up to the individual. It was interesting to learn more about HP Lovecraft when I reviewed Michel Houellebecq's quasi-biography of him and his work. What's funny, however - using that same example - is that when I proceeded to read the two works by Lovecraft contained in that same book, I don't recall thinking to myself "Ahh - this is where his uncomfortable relationship with women takes shape!". That's because the stories were two of his masterpieces, and when you witness a masterpiece, peripheral biographical information is going to gunk-up your enjoyment.

The medium may be the message, but the work contains the words. Outside of this we are left with cultural "bonus features". Nice to have, but not necessary.

Ticket Stub: Spalding Gray

I have this ticket stub (above) from a one-man-show - Spalding Gray at Massey Hall. It was good. I don't know how to describe his "show" in practical terms: he didn't sing, he didn't dance, he didn't perform in the traditional sense. He talked. About himself. He was a monologuist. And his stories would encapsulate, in ever widening circles of narrative, the great many wonderful and (more often) terrifying things going on with his life.

He was an actor/playwright whose home was primarily New York. I'm not sure if New York makes people like Gray anymore. These performances were not "actor/playwright" shows - these shows were, in retrospect, a form of therapy. Gray talked about the things - worries, revelations, lost epiphanies - which affected him as a regular human being; the things which happen around the things we do with our lives.

His best-known performance, captured on film by Jonathan Demme, is Swimming To Cambodia. In it, with a desk, chair, and glass of water he discusses the events which surrounded the time he played a small role in the critically-acclaimed film, The Killing Fields. He talks of his research for the role in the film, of what actually happened during the reign of terror in Cambodia during the early-to-mid 70s.

Gray was a man given to self-exploration, perhaps painfully so. His mother committed suicide while he was in his 20s, and he exhibited symptoms of bipolar depression himself. Her death held an eerie fascination for him. In subsequent performances (also made into films), Monster in a Box (about writing a novel) and Gray's Anatomy (about his fear that he was going blind), he explored his neuroses and anxieties and how they filtered through his relationships with those close to him.

The key to Gray is that he was funny as hell, which turned all of his painfully honest accounts, his public descriptions of private contortions all the more enlightening for the viewer, as opposed to merely sympathetic. Gray was neurotic, but he wasn't looking for sympathy from the audience, and I think this is the second key to understanding him (as a performer, at least). When I saw him at Massey Hall in November of 1996, I don't remember a lot of details (it was his It's a Slippery Slope tour), with the exception of his description of sitting outside, trying to have a soulful discussion with his distant father while a fog horn sounds in the distance. I remember this because I was laugh-crying throughout most of it.

When I heard in 2004 that Spalding Gray was missing, that it was suspected he had jumped off a ferry into the East River, I was not shocked. Suicide - as an objective event, as a subjective idea - was something he had discussed since Swimming to Cambodia. Add to this that he had been in a terrible car accident a few years earlier which had left his right leg partially disabled (not to mention having a fractured skull), and you could see (in retrospect, of course) how, given his frame of mind, it might have pushed those dark thoughts further toward the limelight of contemplation.

It is a shame.

Swirl

I am trying (desperately) to avoid a "boy, it's been a wacky ride these last few months!" post. It certainly isn't for lack of things to talk about, news to update you with, opinions to confess/shout.

Thing is, I don't know who you are. Sure, I know there are some of you who are semi-regular visitors. There are others who happen upon this place by accident (via Blogger or StumbleUpon). There are also those who come here via Google searches, either via my name or - most likely - a book review (which admittedly I haven't done in, oh, a year or so *). And no, this isn't going to be a "Matt wittily evading accusations of being a lazy bastard by turning the camera on the reader" post.

I've been posting artsy stuff, writerly stuff, industry opinion stuff. I don't mind the randomness, so long as there's no fluff. I do mind the lack of output. I wish, for one, that I could post more photographs (which is to say, I wish I had a better selection of photos to post **).

It comes down to the fact that I've been working like a dog since May (note: this happens every year that I'm working on a SAW film). When I come out of these periods, I feel like Rip van Winkle: a little dazed, slow on the up-take. Whereas last year this time I started teaching, this time this year I am a student (part-time) †. I have a small (but good) feature and a small (but good and potentially controversial) TV show on my plate from now till February. If funds allow, I also hope to have an editor working with me on my novel, with an eye to approaching a publisher or self-publishing if that doesn't seem feasible ††. I'm collaborating on a musical.

My plate is full.

- - - 

* which isn't to say that I'm not reading or that I don't want to do any more book reviews. I'm reading a lot of non-fiction, thank you. Much of it either out of professional or academic interest. However, if only to improve my Google ranking, here's a quick book review of Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño: What the fuck was that? (ISBN-13: 978-0811217170)

** another casualty of working so much is my photography. I still have the same roll of film in my camera that I'd loaded in June. I think I've only taken 4 exposures since then. Of course, my cellphone camera gets all the fun these days, unfortunately.

† I will be continuing teaching, but for only two terms this year as opposed to three (which was exhausting and... exhausting)

†† It needs a new name, for one thing. And I know this is going to drive me up the wall more than any changes to the actual content of the book.

The Skinny on Stereoscopic Films, or, What's Up With 3D?

This is one of those moments where I find myself on the inside of a phenomena which (increasingly) arouses strong opinions from members of the public. In this case, stereoscopic filmmaking - or 3D, for short (even though it's not really 3D and tramples on a term which is used in animation for both stereoscopic and non-stereoscopic work).

I'm currently working on a 3D film in an age (or, more precisely, over the course of a year, starting with James Cameron's Avatar) where 3D technology is being pushed as the next in-thing. And yet there are many detractors, some of whom have some good ammunition for their opinions.

As someone who has been intimately involved with a 3D production, from beginning to end (well, almost - we'll be in theatres in October) I find myself more and more a spokesperson for the technology, if not for the studios who currently are trying to cram every release into a 3D format, whether or not they were meant to be that way.

Let me begin by saying that I enjoy the notoriety of being the resident expert on 3D technology at parties and barbecues whenever the subject arises. Now that I have that out of the way, allow me to bitch...

Everyone keeps asking me: is 3D here to stay? The answer is a conditional "yes". The condition being that film studios understand two things: First, that you can't take a 2D movie and make it 3D using brain-dead rotoscoping software and expect it to be a success; second, that you can't continue charging more for 3D films and not deliver a product that is both a good example of 3D and a relatively good film to boot.

To elaborate:

1)  Since the release of Avatar, there seem to be just as many films released in theatres boasting 3D which were never shot in 3D, nor even envisioned in 3D prior to production. Some examples would be Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. These films were taken by the studios after completion and put through a 2D-to-3D conversion process, using software to rotoscope the 3D effect, frame-by-frame, a process unsupervised by the director.

This process, while handy for converting short bits from 2D to 3D for films which originate in 3D, ignores a very large consideration for those producers and filmmakers who shoot in 3D from the outset: you have to plan to shoot in 3D from the start. You cannot take a script or a shot list for a 2D film and superimpose it onto a 3D film: your set design, your camera lenses, your blocking, your picture editing...so many things change as a result of switching from 2D to 3D. When you simply take a 2D show and auto-render it in faked-out 3D you get something which most viewers - critics and plebes alike - will say isn't necessary. At worst, you get Clash Of The Titans - the current poster child for anyone with an axe to grind about 3D in general and post-converted 3D specifically. Not only was it a weak remake of the original (from what I hear), but the 3D post-conversion was done in two weeks. Two weeks. From what I hear, the subsequent "3D" is ridiculous to view.

2)  Considering that theatres charge a premium for 3D films (about $3 more than usual depending upon where you go - sometimes more), when a poorly rendered post-converted 3D film is released it damages the viability of an already vulnerable new technology. It's one thing if a film is bad, but when it's bad in two dimensions, bad in a crappily-rendered pseudo-third dimension, followed by the sucker punch of having to pay MORE to see it...you get my point. I hope. Movie audiences can be forgiving, but there comes a point of revolt which I can see happening if there aren't enough 3D films released which originate on 3D. Furthermore, the studios do no service to themselves if they don't make a point of clarifying this to audiences: why can't they say when a film is originally shot in 3D? Isn't that a selling point? Likewise, why not be honest and say when a film has been post-converted? If it's a case that no one wants it to be known that their film was post-converted...then why post-convert to 3D in the first place? There's certainly no audience I know that is clamouring for blocky cut-out shapes which look like they were poorly separated from the background using Photoshop. To summarize this point, content is king: the quality of content, not the volume of illegitimate content.

Up until Avatar (and god knows how I long for the day when another film takes its place as the "gold standard"), the greatest accomplishment in 3D technology was the few seconds of the guy in House of Wax, standing outside a theatre with a ping-pong mallet, knocking the ball directly toward the camera. You could imagine people ducking for cover at the time. That was 1953. From that point onward, 3D technology didn't change, largely due to the format never winning over audiences: the films were oft-times gimmicky and there were never enough 3D films at any given time to make it feel as if the aesthetic was going anywhere. With the recent advent of digital cinematography, 3D is much easier (logistically and technically) to achieve. And while I would love someone to make "art" (are you reading this, Wong Kar Wai?), I'm happy if, for the time being, the format stakes its territory in the ghetto where its strengths have always been: action/sci-fi/fantasy - hey, if it works, why not? I don't hear anyone clamouring for a 3D Terms of Endearment...

Technicians and filmmakers are doing their part: they are taking a risk and trying to push forward innovatively with something daunting and new. Is 3D here to stay? Again, a conditional "yes". What we need are studios and theatre chains to be honest with the audience and not do irreparable damage to the very thing they are hoping to profit from.

Why You Should See "SUCK" (And Why It Shouldn't Have To Be On DVD)

In 2008/9, I worked on the indie feature, SUCK. It's a rock-and-roll vampire road-movie comedy directed by Toronto's Rob Stefaniuk and produced by Capri Films' Robin Crumley. For a low-budget feature (and I realize that's not the best way to preface a compliment) SUCK is well-written, well-cast, funny, and in places very funny.

However, despite being well received at both the Toronto International and South-By-Southwest Film Festivals, it was denied any interest in a theatrical release by Canadian distributors. The longer I waited for someone to pick it up, the more I wondered what the problem was. Sure, you could argue that vampire films have saturated the market lately, but that's seeing things from the late-summer of 2010 (SUCK was completed over a year ago). It was a no-brainer, even for a limited release: who wouldn't like a rock vampire comedy w/ cameos by Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, and Alex Lifeson (among others)? It's the sort of smart-but-not-overly-self-conscious effort which seems perfectly balanced for a theatrical audience.

Nothing happened. Well, actually, less-than-nothing happened: a lot of crap was released in Canadian theatres instead. Crap like the widely-released and quickly forgotten Gunless, which begged the question: if nobody is interested in seeing Westerns in theatres, what could possibly have been the selling point of a comedy-romance-Western with (as you might have guessed) no gunfighting? The answer is that it doesn't matter: this is Canada, and film distributors prefer to release crap like Gunless and GravyTrain than anything which could hold an audience's sustained interest. Evidently, the point of film distribution in Canada is to go through the motions.

Well, it's too late for Canada. While SUCK secured a limited theatrical distribution in the U.S., it's out on DVD here (the US DVD release is September 28th). This means it will only be screened here through niche film festivals. While that's not a bad thing, it pisses me off that a funny, well-produced film (rare creature that is) should be all but abandoned after a successful festival run. This situation is certainly not helped by SUCK's (pardon the pun) anemic website: it makes no mention of any upcoming film screenings, DVD release dates, or even contact information. Who the hell is the site for? This is what happens when you don't have a distributor to help with publicity. Not even the local indie journals can help: NOW Magazine completely omits any mention of it, as a film or DVD release. How's that for hometown support? Thankfully, The Toronto Star's Peter Howell is the only mainstream film critic to put the DVD release of SUCK on public record (in glowing terms no less...and slagging Gunless ).

I want people to see this film. Not because I worked on it, not because I want to punish producers who keep banking on dead-brained populist Paul Gross vehicles, but because this is a worthy film. It's not Sophie's Choice, it's not going to change your life. But you'll laugh. I just wish it had been allowed the opportunity of a theatrical run, which it so clearly deserved. It works better in a theatre than on DVD: with a pumped-up audience rather than in the controlled confines of your livingroom. That said, I will be pleased if, by my writing about it, one more person will see this movie than if I hadn't.

The Hammer (pt. 1)

When I rented a car and went to Brantford/Onondaga to do some reminiscing and photo-taking, I knew that Hamilton was also, ultimately, on my to-do list.

The aim of these trips is not preconceived. This makes it doubly hard to explain to others (friends, strangers, and loved ones) what exactly the hell I'm planning to do. "Taking pictures and stuff." I'll say - that's certainly no lie, but of course there's more to it. The thing about Zen is this: the second you begin to describe it, it disappears. And so - Art & Zen being the same - there's always a scaffolding I build around my explanation for these trips. It's the same scaffolding I use when I go out writing, or to take photos locally: a vague (yet not untrue) reason which allows me to unspoil the inspiration (which itself needs to be vague) while preventing others from thinking I've lost my mind. I'm not uncomplicated.

Hamilton, being a place of the past for me, exists in patches of haze - this isn't to say I did a lot of drinking or drugs when it was a destination, and yet it seems that way: murky. Of course, a good chunk of that time is best forgotten now. The downtown seems more hollowed-out than it did before, with the exception of Gore Park which to this day reminds me what a good idea it is to have spacious downtown promenades.

It was a precursory destination. First, with an ill-fated relationship which spawned a series of bad decisions which I owe to naivety. I am not alone in stating that I owe many mistakes in my 20s to naivety. It all culminated in a brief tenancy at an old apartment building north of St. Joseph's hospital. In so many ways, it was one of the more excruciating periods in my life - I think the haze I mentioned previously is partially there to protect me from looking too closely at things like this.

The second identity Hamilton had for me happened a few years later when, staying with relatives in Burlington while I studied at college, it became a "big city" to escape to. Toronto was bigger, of course, but it was too far to drive to just to have kicks. Hamilton was perfect and in the early 90s had a great nighttime scene in and around Hess Village. My hang-out was the Bauhaus Café, which sadly (though not surprisingly) no longer exists.

Walking around there now, it seems as if parts of it just gave up. People don't even want to advertise on billboards. To be fair, I shouldn't make any judgments without going there again, but on a Friday night - I'm afraid however that these judgments will only skew worse if I do.

Perhaps I have a better understanding of the haze now: it's there to protect my feelings, it's there to protect the city from the cold light of an unsympathetic audience.

Imagine walking into an empty room.

There is a baseball bat on the ground.
Sitting above it is a lead crystal vase atop a waist-height pedestal.
Written in large letters on the vase are the words: HIT ME.


(This is what enters my mind when I encounter self-righteousness.)

Honesty, After Dark

A continuous problem I have throughout the social media spectrum, the main culprits being Facebook and Twitter, is that - once you get to the point where you have your sister's husband as your "friend", once the guy you barely talked to in high-school is "following" you - you are no longer able to be, well, honest anymore. You cannot post as a status update "Gary is an asshole" without, ultimately, answering to Gary (or his pot-smoking live-in partner, or your co-workers who are largely idiots). You can't even be vague: "Some guy I know is being an asshole.". People will know who you're talking about - context leaves clues people can find. Gary will get mad and want answers.

Oh, you can be honest, alright. You can lay it on the table all you want, but with the inevitable consequence of offending people and getting in trouble for it. In other words, there's nowhere to hide online. This is why I wish there were Bizarro social media sites like, say, Facebook After Dark and Undercover Twitter. Places where you can say the things you really want to say about the people you're "friends" with, the people you "follow", without fear of recrimination. I think we would all be happier as a result.

You reading this, Gary?

(P.S. There is no "Gary", in case anyone is wondering. I don't really have co-workers either) - ed

I'll Show You Stupid

Possibly the worst tactical mistake you can make, politically, is to make fun of an opponent's lack of intelligence. I say this because not only is there an influx of politically active people on the world stage who fall under the category of "lacking intelligence", but there is an absence of memory about how publicly scorning such people only empowers them (and, most importantly, voters).

It's hard. When someone says something completely false - and stupid - the well-educated person's knee-jerk instinct is to say "You're an idiot". Fair enough. But, it's the taunting that backfires. For example, look at Sarah Palin. I think she represents a necessary evil in American politics: a self-elected Voice of The People who campaigns on the rather wispy argument that the US is run by a bunch of elitists who don't understand "real Americans". It's all a bunch of crap (by elite, do you mean they have an education? don't you want the people running your country to have an education? to have seen something beyond the borders of your own country for sake of perspective? who the hell are 'real Americans'? does this imply 'false Americans'?), but it serves its purpose. And what do her critics - who, to be fair, constitute most of the people on the Earth - do? They make fun of her.

She's an idiot. A moron.

The problem is, she's a moron who appeals to a growing number of disenfranchised people who are looking for a proud, politically and morally uncomplicated banner to wave proudly over their heads. And yes, we can argue about why this is and who the supporters are, but - not to say that history is a 1:1 reflection of the future, because it's not - history has shown that history doesn't give a shit about those questions. Reflection happens in the future - that is, after we politely chortle to ourselves at all the nonsense of Palin, her "Tea Party", and her scads of uncivilized minions. That is, after they take the next election.

The elitist/commoner non-argument (it's a ploy, really) is as old as politics itself. We've had something very similar (and thankfully, tamer) happen in Canada. Our current government is a coalition of reformer factions who merged in the late 90s/early 00s to take over the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party (this would be the same as if the current "Tea Party" took over the Republican Party). They removed the word Progressive from the name and lead the country as a minority government. They too campaigned (and still do, whilst in power no less) as the party of the People, as an alternative to whomever stands against their policies (aka "the elites"). It's old hat.

Before they came into power, they - as the Alliance Party - tried very hard to unseat the ruling Liberal government (tangent: can you imagine if the US had a party called the Liberal Party?). Their leader was a man named Stockwell Day, who rode onto the scene (quite literally) on a Sea Doo. He was all charisma and commonality. But as time wore on, people found that his reformist ideas weren't very deep and a lot of the people in his party were either yahoos or - elitists? - began distancing themselves away from him. The chrome on his veneer began to chip away and the man became a running gag; the Prime Minister of the day, Jean Chretien, joked openly that he preferred having Day in opposition (as to suggest his chances were that much better to win elections against the Alliance). Long story short, all it took was a few years, a "unite the right" movement, and a new leader who could streamline (that is, squelch) internal strife and you had a winner. That is to say, the toppling of a government.

I suppose what I'm saying is this: making fun of people like Sarah Palin because she doesn't come across as polished, or sophisticated, or well-educated is ineffective. All you manage to do is inflame the passions of people - many of whom may have been too lethargic or apathetic to vote in the first place - so that they start creating local campaign offices. There is nothing like being intellectually offended to raise someone's ire - anyone's, no matter where or how they were raised. Raise the ire, that is, so as to make them active agents on behalf of those scorned by the "elites". Agents of "change".

George W. Bush was publicly derided by intellectuals and non-intellectuals alike in almost every conceivable medium and venue, yet he served two four-year terms as President of the US. If you want to take down the likes of Palin, take her down as you would take down Reagan or Thatcher - that is, as an opponent worthy of debate, worthy of your concern. To do less would be to knot your own noose.

Our Home and Masochistic Land

Historically, Canada has never even been close to placing first in the medal-count of the Winter Olympics. We are, after all, an exceptionally large country with an inversely proportionate population: I'd be stretching the truth if I said we had 35 million people here.

So, when I read last week that the Canadian Olympic Committee had boasted that (no this time) we were going to take first place in Vancouver a small part of me projectile-vomited across the room. It was upsetting because this ridiculous aim (summed up by the mantra Own The Podium) is something only bureaucrats can cook-up.

News to the COC: it's not like our athletes haven't tried their damnedest in the past. It's not like they didn't "get" the whole gold thing until now. They've never wanted to do anything but put in their best, but the problem - population aside - is typically Canadian: a miserable lack of funding, organization, and foresight. Only in Canada could we create an organization like the COC, with their shallow-sounding boardroom boasts which read more like something from a corporate motivational lecture ("What Colour Is Our Olympic Athlete's Parachute? GOLD!").

It adds insult to injury because there simply is no chance in hell that we are going to top the medal count, this Olympics or any to come. I'm saying it aloud: there is no...well, you get the idea. Heck, I'd be happy if we top Russia. The facts don't lie: despite our northernness, our wintry and sporting dispositions, we simply don't have the population to consistently support a proportionately competitive Olympic powerhouse, especially when up against the U.S. which has 10 more people to every one of ours! In retrospect, we should all be getting mad-drunk with delight! We're currently fifth in the freaking world, in spite of our pathetic sports infrastructure, despite our catch-us-while-you-can stagnant population growth, in spite of corporatist "iceholes" (if I may quoth Colbert) in the COC putting a bragging chip on our shoulder that we didn't need in the first place.

There should be a banner flying at the top of Whistler, just underneath the Canadian flag, with the phrase: "We're Actually Doing Pretty Damn Good".

Seriously.

The Sky is Falling (Very Slowly), or, Will The Real Science Please Stand Up

The problem with having a belief in something which happens to be provocative (and by provocative, I mean something which is not embraced by the whole and which may be a bit thorny for some) is that, like in most aspects of life, all it takes is a few zealots to make you look like a fool by ideological proximity.

As I pointed out many moons ago (December of 2006!) when it comes to climate change (as opposed to the slightly misleading term global warming), outside of blind ignorance our greatest liability are people who jab an accusatory finger at every natural disaster and scream "You see! It's global warming! Climate change caused this! If we don't do something NOW we are doomed as a species!". For me, it started with Hurricane Katrina, when people (a fantastic percentage of whom had no scientific accreditation) began to suggest that it simply wasn't an old-school "act of nature", but rather something to be blamed upon worldwide environmental collapse (as if New Orleans didn't have enough problems to contend with). It fed into a grand conspiracy theory which gave certain people a quixotic reason to exist: that mankind was the chief culprit all along, and that it was only a question of years to fix it. Cue epilogue of Planet Of The Apes.

On the other (self-evident to the point where I wonder whether it's worth mentioning) end of the spectrum are the usual assortment of deep-pocketed corporate "carbon monoxide is good for you" state polluters, and knee-jerk libertarian radio hosts who feel that idling their cars is akin to patriotism (and, as an aside, the whole libertarian-patriot thing seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it?).

The thing is this, panic aside: I do believe in climate change. All that shit turning to water north of us (that would be the Arctic ice) is a sign. Much less lachrymose is all that science, provided by all those scientists, which pretty much confirms that, yes, climate change is real, and that, yes, human industry is a variable in its occurrence. The issue of how the future is looking as a result of climate change is less clear. The problem is this: remember those largely non-scientific people blaming Hurricane Katrina on climate change? The ones telling us that if we don't do something NOW then the world's a goner? They got a lot of attention; the cameras kept rolling. This was probably just a knee-jerk reaction of mass media which was (and is) delighted to scare the public any chance they get (it keeps ratings up). Well guess what: some scientists found that if they used the same sort of seismic analogies and kept the ticking clock of doom just a few minutes away, not only would they get attention, but they could get funding.

Inevitably, it had to end - the speculative bubble that is. You can only say that we have five more years to change the world for five years until people start asking why societies haven't collapsed like the finale of an Irwin Allen movie. And then someone or some group hacked into the records of some climate scientists and found that some of them were acting like jerks, that some of them didn't want to play nice with their facts (unlike all those journalists and columnists we read). To me, this was heart-breaking, because it allowed both honest sceptics and partisan political hacks alike to pull a j'accuse and call it Climategate (seriously, I look forward to a world without the silly and dated gate suffix) and call the science itself into question, as opposed to the questionable actions of a few. Some have hinted that the bad publicity fall-out could set climate science back by a decade if increased public persecution gets worse. However, I feel this is as likely as, well, the world ending in five years.

The good news is that the world hasn't ended; neither our world, nor the world of science. If anything, reading today's op-ed by Margaret Wente in the G&M, even people who previously took every opportunity to deny the existence of climate change are now looking at things plainly: no pro trumped-up worries about imminent global catastrophe, and no con lefty/green/hippy bullshit stereotypes. If anything, perhaps bringing those few scientists into the spotlight has, post whatever-gate, calmed everyone down a notch. Perhaps enough so that we will be able to parse our language into something which does not use fear as a means of persuasion. Perhaps so that we won't dilute the meaning of words like green and sustainable to homeopathic degrees.

I believe (or at least I hope) we can find an entry-point where we can use science and research rather than propaganda and fear to motivate ourselves to improve our prospects (that is, both human prospects and business prospects, two things which have not always shared mutually fulfilling goals). It is heartening to see that there may be an X-Prize for fuel/energy production, similar to what was done for sub-orbital exploration. I'd also like it if we could reboot the message of environmentalism with a good 'ol back-to-basics mantra of: use less (as in packaging, unnecessary products, natural resources). I will be happy, even if it is all a hopelessly lost cause, that we go down working on something together as opposed to a Purgatory of scoring political points against ourselves.