the more the merrier

The first time I had heard about this film was in Telluride, in '03. They were showing it several times as one of their classics, the same year Budd Schulberg was there. I was there as part of their student symposium, and the two prominent american scholars who ran our symposium, would literally wrap up our discussions, and run, really sprint for it, to the theatre where the film was showing.

I never saw it in the mountains, more interested in seeing the mountains then, but the film played at the edmonton film society last night and I stopped by. every monday the royal albeta museum, the soceity plays classics from the lost golden age of hollywood. the first screening I ever saw there was Douglas Sirk's "Written on the Wind." Magic. Almost everybody in the theatre had seen it already, knew when they were going to laugh, or weep. they had seen it first with dates, some still with their original sweethearts probably.

the film, to say the least, was a hoot. the acting by the mains weren't great, but that didn't matter, I guess. it was a classic, for reasons that classics just aren't made anymore. the film, the grandeur of details, situations, impossibilities, and imagination, hinged upon a direction and timing that today would be hokey and campy. Somewhere in the 70's, "realism" took over Hollywood. Some could pull it off. Cassavettes comes immediately to mind. But others continue to fail miserably. In Hollywood, realism just doesn't work. it's all a fairytale, a fairytale told in any other fashion, loses its flair, its mystique, that makes it special in the first place.

bacon goodness

tuesday was the first movie night at bacon. 'Big Night' was shown, the screening went late, and technical difficulties will have to be overcome. but sitting outside on that new beautiful bench, hidden away so long in julie's garage, you could feel it was a neighborhood.

the combination, or communion, of food and people, brings out something, the basics, out of all of us.

1800 pergoies and counting.

arar, art, and water

last night was the mahar arar lecture at the winspear. I didn't know about it at all until mm informed me. part of the poli sci department's annual lecture, the main focus of the evening was our fundamental concept of human rights as Canadians with an emphasis on the idea of torture. I can't say the evening was insightful, but it was certainly powerful and emotional. something more tied to the body, than to our ideas of laws and rights.

afterwards, with the streets still wet with the first rain of the season, the locus suspectus 4th issue launched at harcourt house. ran into mco and ted outside, but ted came back upstairs to schmooze the night away. no art was discussed, nothing memorable was said, but faces were seen and hands were shook--all in the name of art.

tonight, mile zero dance begins its last three day run for Water's Edge, the most insane performance I have seen anywhere. inside the black box of the PCL theatre, I didn't know where I was, or when, but dance does that, it still grounds you to your body, heightening that awareness, while lifting your thoughts and emotions elsewhere.

and the fact that it was a "political" piece through modern dance--so insane.