One

Reading that Esquire feature on Roger Ebert got me thinking about when, where, and how exactly I wanted to get into film criticism. How I got into film, even. Though it’s not really I’m absolutely sure of yet, it’s the career I aspire to have right now - me at my present, my most mature. My most unwavery certain, anyway.

It all began with The Parent Trap. It’s the first film I actually remember rewatching incessantly. I was eight, in the throes of the seasonal flu, stuck in this huge and unfamiliar Toronto house with jack to do but watch television. (Already I was jaded by Saturday cartoons, apparently.) A VHS with two redheaded, freckled girls came my way in attempts to shut me up. In went the tape.

At that point English was still a language I wasn’t all that familiar with yet. I don’t remember too clearly what jokes I did or did not get. Consequently I viewed it like how I now watch the silent slapstick films of the twenties - focusing entirely on physical mishaps, unfazed at what I did not find funny and laughing without abandon at what I did. In other words, mindlessly. Completely unlike how I watch other films, in which I struggle to be distracted entirely by the film. More often than not I'd end up looking up something that concerns the plot and forget about what's on the screen altogether. Because I could escape into the world of Annie and Hallie so easily, I turned to it again and again. I was fascinated by a different scene every single time. How’d they fake the ear piercing scene? What was the Concorde, and why was it so fast? Were Oreos actually better with peanut butter? Obviously what mystified me the most was how they got one girl to play two people. Time after time, after every viewing, I’d go on Yahoo! Movies to re-enlighten myself all over again. Answers to questions I already knew; I didn’t care. I couldn’t get enough. (Now I do it with every film I enjoy even remotely.)

Like I said, I was already a cynic when it came to entertainment as a child. It surprised me that I could be consumed without any effort on my part to stay interested. And since then, I’d been chasing that same feeling. Every time I fork over the ten bucks for the cinema, get cross-eyed by scanning the shelves in my neighbourhood rental store, or channel-surf. It may not be my favourite now, but still: hats off to you, Lohan and co.

It’s not exactly an unique film to be enamoured with. The green-screen abuse and heartwarming storyline; you try finding me a kid who genuinely hated it. I’m just grateful that within those twelve years I’d grown to appreciate films of less complex production methods. I may have the attention span of a fly but I’d much rather watch Lifetime Channel films than Michael Bay’s CGI horseshit. Ultimately it’s the human condition and how cinema can embody its limitless aspects that I’m interested in. I guess that’s why I’ve always not really paid attention to the cinematography and editing and focused most on the screenwriting and acting. (It’s easy to guess which film I’m most pissed about this awards season.) I’m selfish that way, I guess. I'm harder to hold onto than a wet gummy bear.

I suppose putting all that out here would just make it that much more difficult to become that pretentious, pseudo-intellectual pop culture journalist I hope to be. But people like Roger Ebert have taught me that wit isn’t necessarily synonymous with snark. So what if The Parent Trap is what got me into film in the first place? Sometimes a little naivete is all one needs to cut through all the bullshit. This is what I love, and why I love it.

You are what you love

After yet another gig, courtesy of a couple friends' itchy fingers, went to say hello to my friends at the pizza place next door.

‘So I took your advice and went out dancing,’ I said. Hands on the counter, rings rattling against the tiles. A noise as obnoxious as my drunken exuberance, but he didn’t seem to mind. ‘Look, I even wore comfortable shoes!’ Yes, I was that girl. The girl hopping on one five inch boot in attempts to show a man - pupils clouded over with amusement and cataracts - how fashion is done, yo. I half-expected him to say fierce. He is the youngest sixty year old I know.

Tonight’s story was about the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen. Jimmy hadn’t gone to college. He is one of those people who would deem ‘the School of Life’ an appropriate response on the resume. Clichés work when you’ve got old age and wisdom to back it up, I guess. Girls 101 had taught Jimmy how to scalp tickets. Front row seats did not guarantee a night with Bruce, but your chances of dancing on stage with him during ‘Sherry Darling’ would increase by quite a bit.

Groupies. Almost Famous had the perfect prototypes; the successful one getting paid for doing what he loved and the other attempting to overdose after alienation of affection. Billy Miller and Penny Lane. It’s pretty much a prerequisite that you fucking love, love, love this film if you live breathe and eat music. I never understood why exactly, though. How ugly a picture Cameron painted of the industry, of that very love that sustains it. It’s a business of misfits with way too much emotional fuel for everyday life and the assholes who take advantage of it, thus spawning entire generations of people who ‘relate’. It made me question why exactly I like the music I do. Making me ‘feel good’ is the immediate answer. But is it the emotional outlet I enjoy? The way it makes me move when I’m alone? The quality of memory induction?

Russell Hammond in his last lines had told me to say yes to all of the above. ‘Everything.’ It’s the chase of pinpointing all these answers that make it so frustrating, though. There’s an endless spectrum of possibilities out there. Even the way it wrings out your internal organs like a wet towel some people enjoy. (I suspect it may even be their favourite parts.) Whatever it is, it clearly is enough to drive me to paint that facade night after night. Going places. Feeling the speakers vibrate. What’s actually coming out of them doesn’t actually matter all that much, does it.

You embody your hobby as a lifestyle. A means of survival, distraction, socialising. Feeds you. It becomes what you talk about, how you relate to others. It becomes your downfall, metal poles wherever you go. Why you cry, yell, excrete the very toxin that you depended on. And didn’t nobody tell you not to shit where you eat?

Groupies. At the ripe old age of twenty I think I’m over it now.

Adjustments

Last weekend’s activities seemed dictated by the whimsy of somebody else. A screenwriter with a somewhat limited characterisation skills, perhaps.

Began the day after a restless sleep. Woke up expecting to see Beezlebub’s staring back at mine from his seat on my chest; a strange Chinese idiom describing shitty sleep patterns unrivaled by any other metaphor in the languages I’ve known. Watched Deconstructing Harry, which is fast approaching top spot on my list of favourite Woody Allen films. (The man is genius at melding surrealist humour with human tragedy, despite his questionable taste in women.) Then set out to Queen West after a long weather-induced hiatus. I’d forgotten how entertaining just walking around that neighbourhood can be. Faces I’m accustomed to seeing at night - so composed, so at ease - now rumpled by sunlight. Probably on a quest for hangover-deducing grease.

Because the wind wasn’t bothering us so much we kept walking. There’s this one thing I’ve always thought about. What’s the etiquette in sidewalk strolling? Are we allowed to look at your fellow strollers in the eye? Or do we conscientiously avoid any contact? There are only so much store windows one could pretend to be distracted by. It’s the same with the subway. Only on land, we’re all trying to get somewhere. No free copies of Metro to mask your peeking. Pupils trailing after any stocking-clad legs stalking up and down the platform, thinly veiled with an ad for the latest Jennifer Aniston rom-com. So what gives?

Oh yeah, sunglasses.

After stopping at the theatre we watched A Single Man, Tom Ford’s cinematic debut. Many critics have dubbed it a 2-hour perfume commercial, and they’re not wrong. In rare cases though, superficial beauty can salvage itself with surprising depth - as the case with this film. Firth was delightfully restrained. In the many Englishmen (and English schoolboys in training) I’ve known he is the archetype. Dry, deep-voiced, dully exteriored. By filming an aftermath of such tragedy from a subjective perspective - his - an ability to repress grief in the face of reserve is imperial. And he nailed it. In all honesty Firth’s performance is what makes the film. I don’t feel like this is an unfair assessment, though; it is called A Single Man. I could’ve done without Julianne Moore’s terrible accent (she can’t fake anything worth a damn, 30 Rock is a case in point), that’s for sure.

After enduring equal amounts of secondhand embarrassment and glee and disgruntlement at this year’s (televised) SAG awards, set off to a party honouring Toronto Design Week. A much better dressed, less judgmental variation of the people I saw this morning. The venue was too well-heated, reminding me of just how little sleep I got the night before and how little patience my legs had with standing around in these boots.

Escaped to the all-night pizza place around the corner. Despite being located right next to a Pizza Pizza, the quality of this place is miles better. Three guys - Greek and Ukrainian and Polish, funnily enough there wasn't an Italian one - way past midlife crisis age and happy to just dole out wise words and free pies to a hungry girl starved of direction. There is a twisted sense of irony in how differently we view the world. I’m twenty and my vision is tainted with complexity and overkill analysis. They’re pushing sixty-five and believe in only cheese and their wives to stay content. Isn’t experience supposed to serve to fuck you up? I asked them.

‘You’re too serious,’ said the Greek one. ‘And your shoes are too high.’

Into a taxi and bed I went. In brief, that was how I spent the first Saturday of the decade that was unriddled with jet-lag.

Goodbye, Birdie

Peggy Olson, unleashing her inner pussycat in the privacy of her boudoir.

I've been re-watching the third season of Mad Men. I tend to do that a lot with books and films and albums I like. A shot in a film I perhaps missed the beauty of before, or a line in a song I would now interpret differently depending on what happened last weekend. And Mad Men, a series notorious for its mille-feuille philosophy in entertainment, practically demands that one has a DVR in order to fully appreciate anyway.

I keep forgetting how arresting a character Peggy is. It's rare that I'd identify with a female character in a period period. Aspire to be, sure. Be baffled by their submissive quality, always. But Peggy Olson does a strange mixture of kicking ass, taking names, and simultaneously yielding to bullshit. In this particular episode ('Love Among the Ruins'), she struggles to draw a line between a man and woman's feminine ideal. She complains that using Ann-Magaret in Bye Bye Birdie does not speak to the female consumer, yet the boys declare otherwise because whoever speaks to the man, the woman would want to incarnate. She takes this to heart, and proceeds to emulate Ann Margaret in the mirror at home and Joan at some sixties version of a sports bar. (Did they have sports bars in the sixties? Hm.) How easily her hypocrisy allows her to navigate the waters of getting laid obviously disillusions her. She leaves his apartment hastily in the morning.

This makes me think a whole bunch. The means to which we get what we want will always determine on how we view said desired object. This applies to everything. Getting an iPod you get from a long lost aunt, repeated offender in birthday negligence, feels awesome. In retrospect, getting an iPod through an unclasped opening of some drunkard's purse feels just okay. A necklace that would've otherwise been pretty is now tarnished because it's been bought, wrapped and presented by an ex-boyfriend as an attempt to guilt you back into the relationship. In applying this theory to Peggy's one night stand: she wouldn't want to stay the night with this guy, so easily reeled in with a feminine ideal in which she feels to be too simple.

But is there a wrong or right? When I said 'too simple' an ideal, I guess I meant the complexity that lies in the ability to reason what you want out of this exchange. The needs of two people don't necessarily have to clash, but rarely are they on the exact same wavelength. It's not a matter of society's inability to evolve past gender roles. It's just human nature to not want the same degree of satisfaction as others. If one sees somebody suffering on the expense of your comfort, that's what it's worth. If it doesn't seem to affect anyone negatively, said comfort doesn't seem to have changed anything.

And therein lies the death of romance.

Why I like the things I do, part 1

I present to you the bare bones of Lady Gaga's 'Poker Face':



Not going to lie, my initial reaction to seeing that live at Glastonbury was slightly teary. The piano, variations in melody, the sheer power of her vocal cords all added up to a weird attack of sensory overload (otherwise known as 'hay fever' or 'something in my eye'; usually strikes during credit card commercials or Nancy Meyers films). This is not my kind of jam. It wasn't like I was moved. It was more like my brain was so confused by how amazing I thought it was that it sent the wrong signals and thus, manifested in the most simple emotional reaction possible.

And then I started thinking about how uncharacteristic this version was of Gaga's usual antics. The radio has beat the synthesised, studiofied, sexed up version to death this summer. The music video was also a brainless, literal translation of the lyrics: strip poker, booze, debauchery. But armed with nothing but a piano and solitary spotlight, it transformed from meaningless club anthem to something soulful. Even her transparent bubble dress exuded a kind of vulnerability. The notion of pretense is so familiar to the human condition. Gaga herself said this song was about bedding a man while fantasising about a woman. Those lyrics preached through the speakers of a nightclub sound sexy. Listening to it in a much more pared down atmosphere is something else. Almost depressing, really. Compromising our emotional bases is about as integral to one's survival as it is to self-destruction.

But anyhow. The point I'm trying to make is: appreciating art depends entirely on its context. What I'm about to say is a little dorky, but it exemplifies Walter Benjamin's theory of cult vs. exhibitional value perfectly. 'Poker Face' is not something to be valued in a cultural context. The meaning of this song is not particularly unique, and years from now it will not be remembered for being artistically or emotionally profound. It seemed to have served no purpose in its heyday other than to embed itself in one's head in the most frustrating and unfathomable way possible. But upon examining on how it affects someone personally in an alternate method of exhibition is a different story.

You TwitFace

Technology. Or rather, the amazing advances of it.

I liken it to accidental pregnancy. Such responsibility, such work, such - dare I say it - fulfillment? I can't imagine the humiliation havoc that would wreak if it had come by at an earlier time. I don't know about anyone else, but sites like Geocities and Xanga were bad enough. Being the lazy teenage brat that I was, writing each little blurb, positioning it on the page just so with my Pagebuilder, and spam-commenting various other blogs to ~promote~ my shit proved to be too much work. (Not unlike now, actually.) Despite those limitations, though, I still managed to make quite an ass of myself.

It's much easier now. Now with such a spectrum in social networking platforms you can watch, listen, and read about one's self importance; 140 characters' worth or half-hour long podcasts at your fancy. I like to think that at twenty, I'm mature enough to use those disposals for good. If this age of technology had dawned on me at sixteen I doubt I'd be able to handle it, as with many others I'm sure. Facebook makes for permanent - and visual - reminders for last night's stupidity. Twitter provides an outlet for one's most mundane thoughts and hey, now strangers can reply or retweet them too. With those two (and Myspace, I suppose) videos and podcasts are now at anybody's fingertips.

It's terrifying.

A certain degree of unabashed-ness needs exist in your personality to take full advantage of said platforms, of course. It can't be easy to be so shameless. But leaping out the window is easier when you know you have the corpses of others to land on; everyone and their mom has some sort of Internet presence now, it seems.

I've yet to discover what separates the fame-worthy from those who are simply hungry, though. Talent and humour and style are now so subjective. Our tastes have evolved along with said technological means of expression. Fashionistas on Blogspot, stand-up comedians on Youtube, thousands of genres on Myspace and Last.fm. Variety is awesome, but a part of me still longs for refinement. I can't remember the last time mainstream was synonymous with quality. So many subcultures, so many divides. What's good anymore? It's almost like we unite in what we hate, instead of love. It's the golden age of irony and sarcasm.

Anyhow. Whatever tangents I ended up drifting off to in this entry, bottom line is: I sure am glad I didn't have that baby back then. Blogging again and joining Twitter (ugh, I know) still feel awkward. How everyone else seems to put themselves out there so easily, I'd never know.

What happened two years after my last post

Am going to start writing reviews for all the gigs I go to from now on. If anything it’ll remind me in the future, when I’m cracked and wrinkled, that I used to have quite the life.



So XX/Friendly Fires. It was my first time at the Phoenix Concert Theatre; the venue plays out like an abandoned warehouse, with a couple long tables and bar stools to somewhat welcome human presence. Not like a more raucous crowd would care, anyway. I got there early, watched as a cluster of American Apparel deep-Vs and neon Ray Bans gathered around the amplifiers (marked with Xs). The band was an hour late.

‘No worries,’ I said to a fellow whiner. ‘They’re probably just exhausted from the tour; fashionably late and all that.’ As the band honestly was on the last dregs of their North American trek and had already left the keyboardist behind somewhere along the way, I didn’t doubt that they’d be worn out. And I was right. Their show was slow, steady, almost somnolent in its BPM - but hypnotising in terms of how amazing the music was. Those familiar with their self-titled debut undoubtedly have it as a staple in their pre-slumber playlists. Unfortunately ‘Crystalised’ didn’t figure in this gig’s set list but a sweet variation at the end of ‘Infinity’ makes up for it, along with the beloved ‘Basic Space’. They finished with ‘Islands’; probably their most upbeat tune when recorded in the studio but without the pre-recorded drums, it transcended from a sweet ballad to a tune apropos of a dream sequence in one of Gondry’s films. Still fabulous, though. We’ve got the love for the XX, indeed.

Friendly Fires was next. The crowd, previously placid, suddenly turned into the Pacific in the throes of a freak storm; volatile. The entire band joined in on frontman Ed’s antics, inspiring the most exhausted of the crowd (i.e., me) to play makeshift hopscotch on the dance floor. ‘Photobooth’ was sexy and fun as hell, but not until they played ‘Strobe’ did I truly lose myself - it would’ve been nice to have somebody to perform unapologetic PDA with at the moment. They finished with ‘Paris’. Though the lyrics preached escapism, I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere but right there.