Web, photos and assorted geekery
Well, just two for now. This week I started working full-time again— a short contract, which suits me right now. But it gave me the chance to take some lovely shots of the commute to and from North Van. Plus, just tonight, as I came home I saw False Creek swathed in a lovely fog, so I got right on Burrard Bridge to take a few shots. Turns out I wasn’t the only one, seems like every photographer in the area had the same idea!
Well, just two for now. This week I started working full-time again— a short contract, which suits me right now. But it gave me the chance to take some lovely shots of the commute to and from North Van. Plus, just tonight, as I came home I saw False Creek swathed in a lovely fog, so I got right on Burrard Bridge to take a few shots. Turns out I wasn’t the only one, seems like every photographer in the area had the same idea!
The 4th Revolution is a showcase of the future: the technologies, the vision, and the visionaries that will take us away from a reliance on fossil fuels, and towards clean renewable energy for everyone.
Guess I should finally blog about the last movie I saw in the VIFF, and by far the most uplifting.
The 4th Revolution is a showcase of the future: the technologies, the vision, and the visionaries that will take us away from a reliance on fossil fuels, and towards clean renewable energy for everyone.
It’s possible. There are so many bright, dedicated people all over the world, from Germany to China to Mali to Bangladesh, working tirelessly in ways big or small to change lives or change minds: designers making electric cars look sexy, neighbours cooperating to upgrade an apartment building with solar generators, the economist who pioneered microlending, the people installing small solar panels in rural Africa.
Energy autonomy is more than just saving a few bucks on your electric bill. First, it’s about saving a lot of bucks on the electric bill. Solar panels on individual buildings or houses, combined with other upgrades to cut down on, e.g., unnecessary air conditioning, can cut external power consumption drastically. But it also means economic autonomy. The Mali Folke Centre is a case in point: by promoting the use of solar energy in regions where electricity is extremely rare and expensive, they allow people to regularly work after dark. Not a big deal? But as programme coordinator Ibrahim Togola explains, it opens the door for people to create new enterprises, and move Mali away from a purely resource-exporting base for its economy.
The stakes are enormous, and so are the obstacles: lack of political will in many countries, not least being the USA; entrenched interests in the coal/gas/oil industry, and the simple fact that reworking out energy infrastructure will be a difficult process. But the general consensus is that the transition is indeed possible, and so the movie ends with a positive note.
More Canadian shorts, but these are more focused on art and the artist’s life.
More Canadian shorts, but these are more focused on art and the artist’s life.
Some weird abstract shit. Pretty entertaining under different circumstances, but it was also fairly hypnotic and I think it put me to sleep. Not kidding, but I also blame the fact that I was tired that day.
A lovely animated short featuring the work of Japanese artist and calligrapher Gazanbou Higuchi.
An imaginary peek inside the tortured mind of experimental filmmaker Arthur Lippset
A disturbing retelling of the story of Bluebeard, where fiction and reality merge.
Two butch daddies put on tutus and prance about. Then they put on horse heads and keep going. Very, very cute.
The longest film of the series, this is a look at Inuit artist Shuvinai Ashoona, her life in Cape Dorset, and the strange, wonderful things going through her mind.
A long-distance relationship between an artist and a successful plastic surgeon, narrated by the artist herself and illustrated with hand-painted postcards. The resolution definitely counts as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming
An aspiring actor rehearses a scene with his grandson in a diner. Better than it sounds.
Anything a woman can do, she can do pregnant! Wait, even pole dancing? Sure! Why not?
An elevator breakdown leads to a moment of passion between a photographer and his surprise subject. Hilarious and erotic.
An eightysomething standup comedienne’s last show with her loyal sidekick. Or is it? CMoH #2 of the night.
Some fine, fine Canadiana on display in this collection of short films! Touching, funny, or just creepy, but most of all, very bilingual! I’m not exactly sure what amnesia has to do with Canada, and I didn’t see any particular theme amongst the films… But anyway, on to the reviews!
Some fine, fine Canadiana on display in this collection of short films! Touching, funny, or just creepy, but most of all, very bilingual! I’m not exactly sure what amnesia has to do with Canada, and I didn’t see any particular theme amongst the films… But anyway, on to the reviews!
The first, and weakest, short. A Concordia (I think) student must deal with a relationship with a powerful politician, who seems to be tangled in shady businesses, and a surprise affair with a charming fellow student. Unfortunately the characters weren’t really developed, and the ending was anticlimactic and predictable.
But now we’re picking up steam! This hilarious little film pairs up a beautiful but seriously messed up young woman with a sweet older gentleman. Stuck together on a train, she talks his head off about whatever flashes through her tiny brain. We laugh, we cringe, we want to slap some sense into her. Good times.
A teenager who just had an abortion and a lonely handyman bond over lies. Quiet, sad and beautifully done.
A tow truck driver just struggling to get by finds his day getting worse and worse. A simple slice of life, with disturbingly believable characters.
An old hockey player suffering from Alzheimer’s goes on the ice one last time. Wordless, and deeply moving.
A little boy who can see the Virgin Mary, a grandmother who might see ghosts, and a mother who thinks she might join them. Weird, crazy, dizzying, creepy.
Choices, order, and control freakery. Weird but hilarious.
An old lady who can… make people kill each other through their iPods? I don’t know what that was about, but it was pretty damn chilling.
A hilarious parody of Cold War paranoia and jingoism (filmed on location in Vancouver! Didn’t recognise the street, though…) What’s more important that beating those dirty Commies to the Moon? The answer may surprise you…
And the black humour continues! In the year 2060, overpopulation is no longer a problem. Running out of animals to hunt used to be a problem, but not anymore…
Gustav Shpet: Russian philosopher, teacher, writer, polyglot and interpreter; born in Kiev in 1879; exiled to Tomsk, Siberia in 1935; executed in 1937.
This movie is mostly narrated by Shpet’s 92-year old daughter Marina in a series of informal interviews, intercut with contemporaneous film reels, photos and music, as well as Shpet’s letters to Marina during his exile.
Gustav Shpet: Russian philosopher, teacher, writer, polyglot and interpreter; born in Kiev in 1879; exiled to Tomsk, Siberia in 1935; executed in 1937.
This movie is mostly narrated by Shpet’s 92-year old daughter Marina in a series of informal interviews, intercut with contemporaneous film reels, photos and music, as well as Shpet’s letters to Marina during his exile.
We follow Marina as she visits the university (much changed) where her father taught, the church she occasionally attended in the 30’s (hardly changed); tries to visit the apartment where she lived (security wouldn’t even let the film crew and her through the front door); tells the story of her husband, who died one year after her father, working to take down the Russian coat of arms from the Kremlin’s Spasskaya tower and replace it with the tacky red neon star that still shines today.
And we visit a Tomsk museum to Siberian exiles. Shpet is just one of hundreds of names that came to Siberia, one face on a whole wall of faces. The museum curator tells visitors that the NKVD actually planned their purges and ethnic cleanses, with expected minimums (quotas?) of roundups for each region per year.
In the end this is not a story about one man, smart and accomplished though he was. It’s a story about memory, connecting with our past the better to understand our present. And it’s about a past that’s always present no matter how much we try to erase it—streets and buildings, phrases, memories. The Soviet regime did their best to erase ideas, thoughts, and people. To a degree they succeeded, but only to a degree. Shpet told his daughter that “culture, culture, not politics” is what will keep us moving forward. Without going into too much detail, I tend to agree. Culture, memory both individual and collective, this is vitally important to identity and progress.
Palimpsest was preceded by the short Heart in the Wrong Place (original title: Tener el corazón en el lugar equivicado), featuring the extremely awesome experimental filmmaker José Antionio Sistiaga.
This hour-long film takes us on a tour of the Very Large Telescope array in Cerro Paranal, Chile—the most powerful deep-space telescope in the world. We hear the scientists and technicians describe their work and discoveries, and through them get a tantalising glimpse of the cosmos.
This hour-long film takes us on a tour of the Very Large Telescope array in Cerro Paranal, Chile—the most powerful deep-space telescope in the world. We hear the scientists and technicians describe their work and discoveries, and through them get a tantalising glimpse of the cosmos.
I expected to see lots of grand starscapes, as in that IMAX movie on Hubble, but we only see a little bit of those right at the beginning, to get us in the mood. The rest of the movie is very down to earth, a lot of it dealing with life at a compound in the middle of nowhere, and the nitty-gritty details of scientific research and making those ginormous telescopes work. And you know what? This was just as inspirational. The people there absolutely love their work: the phrase “dream come true” comes up at least twice from resident scientists; one relatively minor technician also waxes rhapsodic about the VLT’s work in pushing back the boundaries of knowledge, and awesomely refers to the community of workers as his second family.
But we also hear about the science, and it is beautiful: from the supermassive black hole at the core of our galaxy (indirectly detected from tracking the movements of nearby stars, themselves detectable only by the VLT), to another scientist’s research into extragalactic black holes and how our own black hole applies to that, to monitoring the ancient light of unbelievably faraway galaxies… Man, working there really would be any astronomy geek’s dream come true.
The ESO is planning an even larger telescope array, called the Extremely Large Telescope. The location still hasn’t been decided as far as I know, but one candidate site is not too far from the Cerro Paranal—it’s really an ideal region, high up and very dry all year round. Even now the next generation of astronomers, in high school or university, are dreaming and working and a select few will get to work on the ELT, looking for Earth-like planets around distant stars and studying light remnants from the first generation of galaxies.
PS: The movie was in 3D, which I found pretty unnecessary. I’m no fan of 3D to begin with, and with most of the scenes being talking heads, or indoors, I really didn’t see why I had to wear an extra pair of glasses. Meh. Still, that was the only sore point.
The Out on Screen Society does a lot more than put out quality queer cinema. They also run Out in Schools, a program to put queer films in schools all across the province, to facilitate discussion and fight homophobia and bullying. The news have been full of stories of gay teens committing suicide due to bullying—and don’t think it doesn’t happen in Canada. That’s why Out in Schools is such a vital program, because it may be the difference between life and death for some students.
The Out on Screen Society does a lot more than put out quality queer cinema. They also run Out in Schools, a program to put queer films in schools all across the province, to facilitate discussion and fight homophobia and bullying. The news have been full of stories of gay teens committing suicide due to bullying—and don’t think it doesn’t happen in Canada. That’s why Out in Schools is such a vital program, because it may be the difference between life and death for some students. Reminding them that It Gets Better may help also.
But in spite of the seriousness, there was a lot of fun to be had. Yummy baked goods, a stint in detention where you might have to do lines or get spanked by a nun, dressing up as a nerd or jock, it all adds up to a freaky fetishy fantasy of a high school that never was, where queer is either just another word or the word of the day. And it was awesome. Looking back I probably should have dressed up, if only putting tape on the bridge of my glasses or something, but oh well.
And then you had the cabaret acts. Because these days you can’t put “high school” and “queer” together without it adding up to “Glee,” the first act was a chorus doing “Don’t Stop Believing”. Then you had the usual gamut: a couple drag acts, a truly awesome gardening-themed stripper, a nerdy librarian who tries to keep it classy but can’t help stripping, and a poetry reading. Great fun.
Apologies for the low quality, all I had was my iPhone and the light level wasn’t too good.
Last Saturday a handful of skeptics from CFI Vancouver went down to the River Rock Casino to protest their showcasing James Van Praagh, one of the big-name cold-reading vultures preying on people’s fears and grief, by pretending to hear from dead people.
Last Saturday a handful of skeptics from CFI Vancouver went down to the River Rock Casino to protest their showcasing James Van Praagh, one of the big-name cold-reading vultures preying on people’s fears and grief, by pretending to hear from dead people.
And by “protest,” I mean that just as with Deepak Chopra in June and John Edwards in August, we politely handed out flyers to Van Praagh fans on their way to the show. Just a friendly smile, a “are you here to see Van Praagh? Here’s something to read while you’re in line!” capped off by a “Enjoy the show!” Some frowned, some gave the pamphlets back, one young woman told us she believed in psychics because she was psychic. We never did find out exactly what she believed about her psychicness, so we just parted on a note of “we all have our opinions and we’ll agree to disagree.” Because what else can you do? We weren’t here to make a scene.
But even so, security eventually asked us to leave. Fair enough, we were on private property, and the casino was completely within its rights to kick us out if we were bothering its customers. Most of us retreated to the Skytrain, while the two women in the gang continued to hand out pamphlets on the sidewalk in front of the casino. The guys debated joining them, but (a) I for one was kinda nervous about casino security keeping an eye on us, and I didn’t want to be arrested, however small the probability, and (b) the women seemed to be doing okay, and were probably less likely to be hassled by security, since they looked less threatening.
It was an interesting experience. Kind of anticlimactic, which I guess is a good thing. Doubly good because unlike the Edwards outing, we didn’t have to face any grieving people clinging to false hope. Yeah, i don’t think I could have handled that. Plus, I’m not too diplomatic even at the best of times, and I can’t think of a nice way to tell vulnerable people they’re being strung along by a con man.
So in the end, what did we accomplish? I don’t know. Some people read the pamphlets, sure, and that’s important. Planting seeds of doubt is never a bad thing, but there’s got to be a more efficient—not to mention legal—way to go about it. I think the saying “You don’t pray in my classroom and I won’t think in your church” applies here. As revolting as I find Van Praagh and his cohorts, the casino’s running a business and we can’t expect them to give us free access to their chumpscustomers.
What’s the solution? Obviously there’s no magic bullet to remove gullibility and ignorance, and some people will hang on to their beliefs in spite of all the evidence in the world. Skeptics just have to keep trying. This kind of skeptivism, Getting into people’s faces, does have a place, though we need to go at it a little more smartly, and there are other things CFI should do. Reach out to schools, get kids while they’re young! We’re talking about all those things and more. Stay tuned
I don’t think I’d ever gone to a Fringe show before, and this year I went to two! It should have been three, but I’d double-booked myself on Friday and missed Morgan Brayton’s Raccoonery. I thought about rescheduling (which would have meant buying another ticket, since Fringe policy clearly states there are no refunds or exchanges), but I’d just come down with a cold, so that plan was kaput. Still, I got to enjoy two really excellent shows:
I don’t think I’d ever gone to a Fringe show before, and this year I went to two! It should have been three, but I’d double-booked myself on Friday and missed Morgan Brayton’s Raccoonery. I thought about rescheduling (which would have meant buying another ticket, since Fringe policy clearly states there are no refunds or exchanges), but I’d just come down with a cold, so that plan was kaput. Still, I got to enjoy two really excellent shows:
Dr. Horrible, live on stage, in front of an audience! And it was awesome. All the scenes, all the songs, plus a few extra surprise ones from Commentary: The Musical, which I’ve never watched so they were brand new (“Ninja Ropes,” “Nobody’s Asian In The Movies”, and “Nobody Wants To Be Moist”). All the classic lines were there, eagerly awaited (“The hammer is my penis.” “The thoroughbred of sin?”), along with a brand new one that got a big laugh from the crowd: when Billy and Moist were discussing truly evil deeds to impress Bad Horse, Moist suggested “slashing funds to the BC arts community.”
(Ooo, politics! See, it’s funny because the Campbell government is evil.)
They did a great job of adapting the action for a small stage with very few actors (for example, in the heist scene the truck was first a tiny remote-controlled one, then left completely offstage.) The actors were fine; the actress playing Penny was a little weaker, and I thought her voice was too soft, but aside from that, no complaints. I absolutely loved the show.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect with Fucking Stephen Harper: How I Sexually Assaulted the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada and Saved Democracy. I sort of thought we’d get a humorous retelling of the incident where he accidentally touched Stephen Harper’s junk and was charged with sexual assault (though that charge was eventually dismissed). What it turned into was a blistering rant on Canadian Conservative politics, the explicit homophobia of lots of Conservative neanderthals past and present, including the dead-eyed Bush Lite currently running our country, and the apathy of many gay Canadians who think we’ve got it pretty good here. And we do, no question, but there are people in power right now doing their best to turn back the clock and impose their version of Christianity on the country. Whether or not they succeed is up to us.
I really should start on Marci McDonald’s The Armageddon Factor, shouldn’t I?
A few photos I took the other day in Lighthouse Park, West Vancouver.
A few photos I took the other day in Lighthouse Park, West Vancouver.
