Bollywood/Hollywood

We finally saw Deepa Mehta's newest movie, Bollywood/Hollywood which we couldn't make to in the festival. An elegant and clever mix of a hollywood (western) story happening in Toronto, within an indian family, and Bollywood film features, such as exaggerated dance scenes, the movie manages to satisfy the audiance with every scene, even through the closing credits.

The Dog and the Owner

Sometimes when walking around the house, to go to the station or to do shopping or rarely to just walk, I see people who are walking their dogs. I look at the dog, the owner and most of the times I'm amazed to see how much more intereting the dog is. Sometimes we throw a half-uttered "hi" to each other and rarely a half-joking comment about the weather, usually with a polite smile. That wraps up our interest in each other. But when it comes to the dog, I'm just dragged with its way of walking/running, its smelling curiosity, the way it looks, etc. It rarely happens that I show some gestural reaction but I see other people do so. They sit, or squat by the dog, affectionately pet the dog, and often times also exchange a few words of praise or astonishment about the cute dog with the owner. The owners are defined thourgh his/her dog. The last time on a similar occasion, I was struck by the thought that I, we others, may also be defined through our belongings, our coat, the pair of trousers we have on, or the glasses we wear. And these belongings determine the interest of the people around us in us, many of them our potential future friends. This is a most natural situation, and yet the thought of it gave me a shiver.

Never Do!

• Never sit at the computer right after you get home with your friend!


• Never tell your friend not to sit in a chair because you want to sit in it later!

Aïda

Last night, Koala and I saw the Vancouver Opera's production of Giuseppe Verdi's Aïda. Performance was good, the lead Soprano singer fabulous, and staging adequately well-done for a piece of this sort which mingles the garndeur of a war time and the delicate passages of individual emotion.

Now, there is something about the “opera” in general that has always troubled me:

The story has little actual time to develope and unfold fully, so it goes by highlights. There are turns and twists, all right, but I always feel unsatisfied by the story. In fact, in order to enjoy any opera I have gone to so far, I invariable had to immerse myself in the music itself, including the human voice. I first thought I have never enjoyed programme music but after a little search I realizd I admire many pieces of music that are regarded as programme music. So. But the unease with the story part of the opera still remains.

Where Are We From?

-“Um, I'm from Iran.”
-“Oh, you mean the city. The capital, Tehran.”
-“Yes, I'm an international student.”
-“Of course, I've done my paperwork. I'm on a student permit.”

...

When written this way, isolated from the environment (a birthday party) and the manner in which the questions were being asked (pretty polite) and the person who was asking them (boyfriend of a persian friend who's been here since she was 7 or 8), it is just like I have been to a criminal interrogation session. “How strange! Of course I'm on a visa,” I was repeating to myself and to Koala, and she to me and herself I suppose, on the way back home. No, it doesn't happen often at all. But when it does happen, it's so stinging it won't be simply washed off one's mind and/or memory. Have people really become so paranoid? Or do I (we) look so frightenning?! Huh, how strange! Of course I've done my paperwork!

Well, I mustn't complain much. I'm really only an international student. But what about a canadian citizen who just does not white enough to be traced back to northern Europe in the past 50 years? When they answer they are canadian, many are asked again: “Um, I meant originally. Where are you originally from?” Aha! Does this answer that question: “I guess I'm originally from somewhere in Africa about a few thousand years ago, just as well as you”?

I understand curiosity, making conversation, this, that. But there is a pattern though. I almost never ask this question. At least not among the first ten questions I ask in the beginning of a new acquintance. Not out of curiosity, making converstaion, or whatever. But I'm almost always asked this question. Koala is aksed the same question.

Anyways, I'm so sick of this question. Why not asking about my hubbies, my favourite authors, peots, movies, pieces of music, etc., etc. I guess Saint-Exupéry has not yet been read by those who start with “Where are you from?” or already been forgotten.

Whatever Happened to the Schedule?

Oh yeah, schedule. The sleeping schedule. Well, this is what happened:

I managed to keet it up for 72 hours. The first day, I simply didn't sleep because I had too much to do, and I wasn't sure yet how I wanted to do it. Then at midnight I slept for three hours from 12am to 3am. I wrote about it then. I was supposed to sleep again at 9:30am and then at 5:30pm each time for 1.5 hours. I slept from 10am to 11:30am which wasn't bad at all. But in the afternoon I had to rush to the film festival screeings of the day, and didn't manage to get any sleep on the shaking bus, but only a few minutes of a very shallow nap. At midnight I did sleep for another 3 hours, but in the next morning I didn't sleep up until 11:30am and then forced myself to get up at 12:30pm since I had to be at school at 1:30pm. In the afternoon I tried to sleep my scheduled 1.5 hours in the lunch room, and indeed managed to get about 1 hour sleep I guess. But the defeat came through, crawling at night. I woke up only after a good 7.5 hours of sleep and the alarm couldn't help it either.

So, I was defeated. Right, I couldn't keep up with my schedule. I was too tired all the time, which I'd like to blame on it being the first days of a first attempt. But now after several days, I feel so much reluctance to go back to the experiment that I don't think will try it in the next few weeks. Maybe I should just cut down on my regular sleep chunk of the night. For now at least.

Festival Rolling X


Irreversible by Gaspar Noë.

A reverse chronological, graphic and shocking story of a girl's deadly rape and her boyfriend's persuit of revenge all in one dark night. When the director adds to this horrible story shaky, spinning camera shots and time-to-time dazzlingly direct light of whatever light sources he finds at the scenes, the movie easliy surpasses the border of the tolerance of the average audience and pushes the visual limits of the professional movie-goer, to say the least. BBC reported 250 people walked out of the film's screening at Cannes, quite a few of them needing medical attention, including 20 who fainted!

The range of the feelings evoked by the movie is so wide talking about one of them sounds just impossible. Anger. Violence. Revolt. Disgust. Giddiness. Astonishment. Laugh. Amusement. Helplessness. Violation. Affection. Comfort. Love. Ease. Expectation. Elevation. This is what I went through chronologically. From hell to paradise.

The synopsis given by the director:

“Irreversible. Because time destroys everything. Because some acts are irreparable. Because man is an animal. Because the desire for vengeance is a natural impulse. Because most crimes remain unpunished. Because the loss of a loved one destroys like lightning. Because love is the source of life. Because all history is written in sperm and blood. Because in a good world. Because premonitions do not alter the course of events. Because time reveals everything. The best and the worst.”

Festival Rolling IX


The Trials of Henry Kissinger by Eugene Jarecki.

The movie explores the question "Is Henry Kissinger a war criminal?" and in doing so studies three cases of mass killing of inncent civilians of which Henry Kissinger could more or less directly be accused: Cambodian war initiated, against the US constitution, in Nixon's presidency under Kissinger's direct advice which eventually led to the genocide carried out by the Red Khmers during the period between 1975 to 1979, who took over the choatic country left behind by the US war, killing about 1.7 million civilians; Indonesian invasian of East Timor in 1975 with the US green light given by Kissinger in a meeting with Suharto just few days before, again against the american law, with american weapon sold to Indonesia for the sole purpose of self-defence; and the political assassination of the Chile's army commander-in-chief, Rene Schneider, in 1970, and then the coup in Chile which resulted in the alleged murder of the democratically elected president, Salvadore Allende, and eventually loss of the lives of tens of thousands human beings. A well-done documentary definitely worth watching.


A Peck on the Cheek by Mani Ratnam.

A bollywood comedy-drama account of the current ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. The camera-work is brilliant. In the beginning, the movie also shows promising admixture of dramatic elemnts with the conventional bollywood song singing clips, which are taken to a new level in their set design as well. But in the second half of the movie, raw sensationalism takes over and the movie ends with a definitive stroke of an emotional parted-mom-and-daughter-revisit scene from whish it never recovers.

Breakthrough Sleeping Schedule!

Having the possibility of a new sleeping schedule in mind and then again being reminded of it by Trevor Hill I decided to make an experiment parallel to that of Trevor's: Sleeping 3-or-4 times a day, each time only 1.5 hours. I have read or so recollect that 1.5 hours is the natural time needed for a complete sleep cycle, hence the portions' length.

But to get used to such a gladiator like schedule one has to rehearse! I decided to reduce my sleeping time to 3 hours for now, and gradually make it into 1.5 hours. Last night I went to bed slightly before 12am, and got up at 3am. I was a little sleepy but since I had real work to do -last load of the notorious editting job- I managed to stay up with the help of a cup of coffee. My next sleep would be at about 9:30am till 11am, then 5:30pm till 6:30pm (I'm going to watch two movies tonight, starting 7:00pm) and then another 3-hour sleep at night.

Let's see what will come out of this!!

Festival Rolling VIII


Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity by Mina Shum.

I'll write about this soon! Okay, here it goes:

An optimistic movie about the relationships and the connected mesh of the human society. Mina Shum tells 3 parallel stories, with a touch of surrealism and symbolism of the kind found in Amélie. The direction and the story both have an air of grace which suits the kind of worldview the movie presents, the former due to the director's charm and the latter thanks to the 12-year-old Valerie Tian. A very good work for a young director, and the cast as well.

Festival Rolling VII


Kedma by Amos Gitaï.

A patient, slow-paced retrospect of the roots of the state of Israel in 1948, Amos Gitaï chooses the arrival of a group of immigrants on a ship named Kedma (meaning ‘toward the east’) , and their first few hours in the prmised land of Palestine to contemplate in vivid, honest images his country's history. The pace is deliberately slow so much that the whole movie hardly covers a day-long time period, but it is very well suited for a contemplation of this sort in a troubled time when the fast pace of events has become the norm. What Gitaï succeeds in showing most clearly is the deep roots of a conflict that has wrecked both Jews and Arabs today.


Ten by Abbas Kiarostami.

Ten is an intriguing movie. Kiarostami explores the abilities of digital camera by mounting it at two fixed angles on the dashboard of a car, showing us almost only the driver's and the passenger's faces. Such a stationary structure surprises by its moving content. The driver is a young iranian divorcée, recently remarried, whose conversations wit a son, sisters, a young and an old woman makes up the ten episodes of the movie. The performance taken from the kid is astonishingly natural, and other characters also appear to be just playing their everyday lives. Kiarostami opens an eye through the little gap of its two fixed digital cameras on the mundane facts of the Iran's capital life as experienced by a typical middle-class woman. The plots are so natural no one can find a better way of experiencing the knotted, contradictory complexity of such a woman's life in Iran from outside. The flow is of the scenes is smooth and the dialogues are, at least to the iranian audience, courageous and funny, though familiar at the same time.


Cry-Woman by Bingjian Liu.

A story of survival amidst an economic and social chaos, taped outside the official rules of China's film code. The movie reveals a richness of situations and traditions, and in beng so is also very spontanuous. This spontaneity is enhanced by the major role's character who, in order to survive in an uncaring crowd, has to decide quickly. This makes it a bit hard to keep track of the time in the consecutive scenes, and renders a few stages of the story superficial, but the movie is still a strong and successful depiction of the social and cultural context it pictures. The cast are all unprofessional first-time actors and the directors manages to take a reasonably good performances from all of them, especially a two-year-old girl who is abandoned by her family.

Minor Disappointment

It was there,
charming, calm, virtual.
It was rolling
in prosaic oblivion
unaware of my existance.
It was calling
for trying my chances,
for putting a step forward.

Words came out of my fingers,
bearing a statuesque desire.
They folded, molded, shrieked
into layers, wires, voices.
Connections were made
in their swirling
one after another.
An image was formed
shining my face
off its silver skin.

I'm there,
content, silent, soothed.
I'm rolling
in proses and verses
on ripples of words upon words.
I'm calling
for dreams to queue,
for wishes to come true.

Shadows come out of my corpse,
holding deep breaths.
They swell, dwell, fade
into puffs, bubbles, indistinct ghosts.

I look back.
I'm wiped
off its face.

Festival Rolling VI


Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary by André Heller, Othmar Schmiderer.

A unique 90-minute interview with the 81-year-old former secretary of Hitler (from 1943 to 1945) in her last living year, this documentary opens up an opportunity to view that horrible era from inside the locus of the infamous Führer itself. This is the only and last time Traudle Junge tells her stroy, after a life long silence. The little stories told by her don't sound new but show two things clearly: First, that even a person as notoriously pernicious as Hitler has a human face; Second, that his life was very much detached and isolated from the aweful reality he and his party were responsible for. So as Miss Junge points out herself, she was at the nerve knot of the events, the Blind Spot.


Women's Prison by Manijeh Hekmat.

A brave look by a women's rights activist, Manijeh Hekmat, into the feminine side of one of Iran's infamous prisons, spread over a 17-year-long time period. Choosing a very controversial theme such as women's perison in Iran's today's society naturally leads to a plathora of social and political issues that can be addressed. Of course not many of these issues could be addressed in the limited time span of a movie. But in Hekmat's movie almost all such issues are somehow swept to the background and the actual story is dedicated to the recurring rhetorics of authority and resistance between the head ward, Tahereh (Roya Taymourian), and one of the prisoners, Mitra (Roya Nonahali). This story is then devided up to three snap shots, each relying on one supporting role, all played by Hekmat's own daughter (Pegah Ahangarani), and consisting of a series of smaller stories much like the anecdotes many prisoners have to tell when asked about their prison time. The fluidness of this structure makes it a little hard for the movie to make a strong impression about its subject matter, although it certainly conveys the wretchedness of the situation.

Putting this and some other technical weaknesses (like the sound recording which sounds very artificial at times or some camera shots), the movie shows strong performances by Roya Nonahali and Pegah Ahangarni. It's also a very bold try, in spite of its final lenience toward the ward which seems a little out of obligation, in portraying the increasing population of prisoners (hence the crime rate), their decaying social attitudes, corruption, prostitution, addiction and also dysfunctions of the system 22 years after a revolution promising to erase exactly these very problems.

Festival Rolling V


Walking on Water by Tony Ayres.

A window into the grief of friends' and relatives' loss of a loved one to a crawling illness, one that successfully avoids the conventional look at the glorious pasts with the usual sensational gloss, remaining far from any sentimentalism. It's a straight and far-reaching investigation of human reactions and his/her defensive, unconscious responses to such serious situations, also taking a peek at the issue of euthanasia. There is a witty and very much needed use of sense of humour that decreases the gravity of the moments, without which the time spent to watch the movie would have been as unbearable as that of ‘Dead Man Walking’

Festival Rolling IV


Nothing More by Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti.

The movie evolves around a girl who stamps letters at a post office and her growing habbit, to get around the boring job, of fixing letters! She does not just fix the letters but she replaces them with some real literary pieces. The movie is abound with unusual tricks from silent-movie era to free animation handling of the pictures. The imagery of the movie, sometimes topped with the girl's readouts of the letters she writes, which near poetic verse, is enticing. Some shots would make for wonderful works of photography. The style of the camera and the set-up of the scenes are eyepleasing. The poetry of the images and words is soaked in an exaggerated comedy that seems unfit and bored at times, but is still able to make a few laughters. Some elements of the stroy are hovering loose in the air and the ending looks a little cliché but the delightful images save the movie.