"A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read."

- Mark Twain

Bandcroft!

Yes...the improv-rock band, of which I am a member, returns. We play the mighty Press Club this Monday (July 28th). If you are in Toronto or plan to visit, check us out.

What The Internet Hath Wrought: Film vs. Book Reviews

One thing the Internet has helped birth is the ability of anyone to sound (or sound like they are writing, rather) like a professional film critic, regardless of whether they know what they they are talking about, whether they have seen more than three films in their lives, etc. . I've glanced at "user-contributed" reviews on Facebook's Flixter application which make even the trashiest pieces of celluloid sound like fair-game for a first-year Media Arts screening.

There's nothing wrong with this. I'm not going to editorially trample on anyone's feelings, yet.

However, while the same could be said for online book reviews, it's much harder to get away with it (it being sounding like a professional...or a professional who writes as they sound. Something like that).

A film is inherently visual. It also has sound (most of them, at least). It also usually uses actors who speak lines. For the armchair (or E-Z Boy) critic, this audio/video-based performance makes the casual accusation of, say, "bad acting" somewhat verifiable (again, somewhat verifiable - there are always disagreements and prejudices, but these tend to be questions of degrees rather than disagreements of monolithic good or badness. To this end, it's always harder for the viewer to infer a good performance from a bad film; it's like a supermodel who cleaned her hands with an old dish cloth - sure she's pretty, but she smells bad for some reason.).

Outside of the necessity of reading words printed on a page, books by comparison are not visual, nor do they have sound (assuming we forget for the moment about audiobooks). When a character speaks in a book, we don't see Sally Field (mind you, perhaps some of us do...), but rather some variously fuzzy or non-fuzzy imaginary abstraction - an avatar if you will - that we attach to the words in order to help us visualize the character(s). For one person, they may be fluffy, indeterminate cloud-like beings, for others the animated cast of Battle of the Planets. Whatever floats your boat.

In other words, as regards books, whether it be War & Peace or The DaVinci somethingsomething, chances are pretty slim that someone's going to criticize the performance of their personalized imaginary helper-beings, who mouth the pretty words in their head whilst they read. For the book reader, they don't need to be convinced primarily through performance, but rather through conviction; the conviction of the author's choice in story crafting, character actions, etc... This is not to say that the topic of conviction in books cannot be just as debatable as an actor's performance in a film, however, due to being a medium which is more abstract, the arguments are invariably deeper than those shared about films.

Let me cut to the chase, this being the Internet and most of you having probably left to check out porn or martini recipes by now: books are abstractions whereas films are pantomimes of abstractions. Here, let me pull my chair closer [chrrrr]: films are easier to criticize. Period. They are small books, painted big. Once you have a rudimentary sense of what works and what doesn't in film (acting, dialogue, story, and, peripherally, visual effects, sound design, directing) it's pretty easy to sound like A.O. Scott, even when reviewing, say, Tank Girl:

In this wild, cheeky romp, the audience benefits from wonderfully imaginative environments, spunky performances, and a ceaseless plot driven by pure adrenaline. Tank Girl issues a decree to the viewer: the graphic novel-turned movie is a serious threat to original screenplays.

Is this valid? Again, if you've only seen three movies in your life, perhaps it is. Perhaps Tank Girl is for you. I only saw the first half of Tank Girl. I suggest you see none of it. In fact, I suggest all remaining prints be stored on the moon - but that's me.

The problem (or advantage) with a book review (vs. film) is that there is much less wiggle-room when declaring your opinion. Unlike film, where there is more latitude for interpretation (particularly as regards camera work and editing), with books we are dealing with what is literally written on the page. Room for interpretation? Of course - there will always be room for interpretation, otherwise MFA professors would have nothing to structure their courses with. But certainly - whether we are talking about so-called professional book critics, or their translucent-skinned basement-dwelling non-professional Internet cousins - the opinions don't nearly or consistently bounce from one end of the "good/bad" spectrum to another as is common with film.

I think it comes down to the fact that readers generally respect authors more than viewers respect filmmakers [and on this note, I suppose that really means "directors" - filmmakers, in my book, are people who go out with a camera, an idea, and come back from the edit room having done 80% of the process with their own hands - I'll write more about this later]. This isn't to say that readers respect authors as people; rather, I submit there's a begrudging respect to anyone who has the perseverance to lay down 40,000 words which construct coherent sentences and paragraphs.

It's a layman's respect, whereas with filmmakers, if we don't like what they do, then... well, they suck.

[For sake of disclosure, I've only done one film review on this blog - albeit in collaboration with my friend, Simon - and it was an artsy documentary about a soccer player.]

"Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve."

- Karl Popper

Another List...

So, the listing (previously done here) continued, this time my friend thought it best to do movies: one for every year you've been alive, as per last time. There was a particular emphasis this round on re-watchability, so instead of simply picking the best of a particular year, we needed to pick the films that we would involuntarily pay attention to if they happened to come on TV one night (as an example).

My picks:

1970 Five Easy Pieces, dir. Bob Rafelson

1971 A Clockwork Orange, dir. Stanley Kubrick

1972 Solaris, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky

1973 The Exorcist, dir. William Friedkin

1974 Chinatown, dir. Roman Polanski

1975 tie: Love and Death, dir. Woody Allen
tie: Three Days of the Condor, dir. Sydney Pollack

1976 The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, dir. John Cassavetes

1977 Annie Hall, dir. Woody Allen

1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, dir. Philip Kaufman

1979 The Ninth Configuration, dir. William Peter Blatty

1980 The Shining, dir. Stanley Kubrick

1981 Cutter's Way, dir. Ivan Passer

1982 The Thing, dir. John Carpenter

1983 tie: Rock & Rule, dir. Clive Smith
tie: The Fourth Man (De Vierde man), dir. Paul Verhoeven
tie: Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, dir. Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

1984 Paris, Texas, dir. Wim Wenders

1985 Brazil, dir. Terry Gilliam

1986 Aliens, dir. James Cameron

1987 Wings of Desire (Der Himmel uber Berlin), dir. Wim Wenders

1988 The Vanishing (Spoorloos), dir. George Sluizer

1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors, dir. Woody Allen

1990 La Femme Nikita, dir. Luc Besson

1991 Zentropa (Europa - original title), dir. Lars von Trier

1992 Glengarry Glen Ross, dir. James Foley

1993 Naked, dir. Mike Leigh

1994 White, dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski

1995 tie: Underground, dir. Emir Kusturica
tie: 12 Monkeys, dir. Terry Gilliam

1996 tie: Ghost in the Shell, dir. Mamoru Oshii
tie: Breaking the Waves, dir. Lars von Trier

1997 Perfect Blue, dir. Satoshi Kon, Hisao Shirai

1998 Dark City, dir. Alex Proyas

1999 tie: Top of The Food Chain, dir. John Paizs
tie: The Iron Giant, dir. Brad Bird

2000 tie: Maelstrom, dir. Denis Villeneuve
tie: Possible Worlds, dir. Robert Lepage

2001 In the Bedroom, dir. Todd Field

2002 Read My Lips (Sur mes levres), dir. Jacques Audiard

2003 Mystic River, dir. Clint Eastwood

2004 2046, dir. Wong Kar-Wai

2005 Grizzly Man, dir. Werner Herzog

2006 Children of Men, dir. Alfonso Cuaron

2007 No Country For Old Men, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen

Now, I took some flack from Simon for picking the likes of Solaris and Paris, Texas. This turned into an interesting discussion about how one person's "You picked what??" is another person's "Damn straight - and yes I consider that film extremely watchable.". Sure, a film like Naked is probably something most people will only wish to watch once...and yet, despite the fact that I love a good suspence/thriller/comedy/sci-fi/anime film, I honestly do like certain films which are slooow and gloomy. I consider them re-watchable even if they aren't, by nature, exciting.

Book Review: A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, by Julian Barnes

It's been well over a month since my last book review, coincidentally enough regarding another book by the same author: England, England by Julian Barnes. I was impressed by his skill in crafting an inventive satire as well as the philosophical depths he explored, though as a whole the book was not entirely satisfying. My wife had warned me it was not his best book. She suggested instead that I read A History of the World in 10 ^1/2 Chapters. And hey, it was already there on our bookshelf, so being the frugal person I am (and honestly wishing to explore more of his compelling style) I considered it a win-win situation.

The short version of this review follows: I really liked this book

The long version of this review, admittedly, I must approach with trepidation, the sort of which I have not had to experience in previous reviews. The reason I shall submit up-front: the very first chapter contains elements that I can only surmise (if I may craft this sentence in a way that is both fair while not attracting the undue curiosity of lawyers) were lifted from another author's book. I'm not going to go into great detail, as I don't wish to write a J'accuse, so much as innocently hope that someone - perhaps even Barnes himself - would clarify the situation. I shall touch upon this again, later.

A History of the World in 10 ^1/2 Chapters is not, strictly speaking, a formal history of the world, though it does shift throughout time. Essentially, it is a collection of stories and one or two essays, the whole of which makes some attempt to summarize the haphazard longings and deceits of humanity through history, with the recurring theme of Noah's Ark sprinkled throughout in variously literal and metaphorical techniques. Some narratives are light-hearted and satirical, others are solemn and erudite. It is a book which, as a whole, has something to say about mankind - the big and small picture of mankind - from various viewpoints, the majority of which is not flattering. Yet, Barnes is not a nihilist; he sees our faulty strengths and compelling weaknesses as part of the way humanity is wired.

This is illustrated with both striking description and considerate attention to detail, particularly in the series of "chapters" (which sometimes are really just separate, standalone stories) regarding the shipwreck of the French frigate Medusa off the coast of Mauritania in 1816. With this as the central focus, the author devotes three perspectives on the event: one which describes the horrific facts of the shipwreck and its survivors, another which takes an entirely different approach by offering a historical critique of Théodore Géricault's famous painting based on the shipwreck, and yet another - this time purely fictional - which touches upon the themes of representation vs. idolatry with the painting serving as an afflatus for its determinedly devout protagonist.

There are no prescriptions for mankind's delusions, no salve provided to alleviate our existential isolation, or our violent impulses. At the end of the day, summarized lovingly in the last chapter, we find ourselves compelled to go through the same motions, but not without circumspection which perhaps is our only saving grace. In Barnes' world, humanity will always, ultimately, shit the bed (a phrase my cousin passed on to me), but not without looking for a means to change, even if that change is perpetually out of reach. It is evident that Barnes' is one of us; he respects those, regardless of mental state, who are compelled to find the truth, particularly those truths which are only revealed to the individual and ignored by society-at-large.

And now, the bane of the book I mentioned earlier. In the very first chapter, a satirical narrative of Noah's Ark and the Biblical flood, Barnes' seems at first to take inspiration from Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage (Barnes' book was published in 1989, Findley's in 1984), a novel whose story is an equally slanted (and somewhat vicious) satire on the flood narrative. In both - told by a non-human passenger on the Ark - Noah is a drunken, abusive man whose pious subservience to God's will pushes him and his family to violent extremes. However, the similarities - particularly in two passages - became so blatantly identical that I had to throw up my hands in dismay (a perfect case in point being Barnes' use, in similar reference - just as Findley used in the prologue to his novel - the phrase "Not Wanted On The Voyage", with Findley upping the ante originally by putting this in full-caps). Again, I don't know what to do with this. After some research, I know that Findley was shocked by the similarities, however he decided not to pursue legal action because he didn't want A History of the World to gain any more publicity than it had. My hope is that - at some point - Barnes will address it, "it" being so blatant when you've read both the novel and the short chapter. The fact that I can still recommend Barnes' book is a testament to his skill as a writer, though this ethical discrepancy unsettles me.

A History of the World in 10 ^1/2 Chapters (ISBN: 978-0679731375) is available at any number of friendly, independently-owned bookstores. Or you can purchase it online. You can also find Timothy Findley's wonderful novel, Not Wanted on the Voyage (ISBN: 978-0140073065) as well.

A list...

Without going into great detail, my friend Simon got me hooked on a list-making exercise. The task: list your favourite albums (favoured for various personal or technical reasons) for every year you've been alive.

This posed many problems, as anyone who loves music would discover. Firstly, how does one pick only *one* album from, let's say 2004 when there were so many great releases ("Louden Up Now" by !!! being a notable casualty). What about albums that - while not "great" - represent a moment in time for the listener which can never be replaced (I'm thinking "Pod" by The Breeders).

As Simon later shared with me, after we'd posted our lists, there are Sophie's Choice moments: which albums do you choose to include and which do you decide to cast away? Heart-breaking, really. And then, of course, there are those years which for the individual are barren (mid-80s, mid-90s) of truly wonderful music...choosing between two or more great releases is one thing; at least you can make a choice. What do you do when there's nothing particularly good? (Hint: you hold your nose and spin the wheel.)

And of course, after you make these choices, you inevitably bolt out of your sleep in the middle of the night, screaming "Why didn't I pick The The? Nooo!". Oh, the horror. In any case, these are what I picked. Try it some day - it's hard, but sorta fun at the same time (he says).

The list:

1970 - Cosmo's Factory, Creedence Clearwater Revival
1971 - Pearl, Janis Joplin
1972 - Exile on Main Street, The Rolling Stones
1973 - Stranded, Roxy Music
1974 - 1969: Velvet Underground Live, The Velvet Underground *
1975 - Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin
1976 - Fly Like An Eagle, Steve Miller Band
1977 - Marquee Moon, Television
1978 - Street Hassle, Lou Reed
1979 - The Wall, Pink Floyd
1980 - Scary Monsters, David Bowie
1981 - Tattoo You, The Rolling Stones
1982 - Shoot Out The Lights, Richard and Linda Thompson
1983 - Rock 'n Soul, Pt. 1, Hall & Oates
1984 - Couldn't Stand The Weather, Stevie Ray Vaughan
1985 - This Nation's Saving Grace, The Fall
1986 - The Colour of Spring, Talk Talk
1987 - The Joshua Tree, U2 ***
1988 - If I Should Fall From Grace With God, The Pogues
1989 - tie: Girls Girls Girls, Elvis Costello **
1989 - tie: Doolittle, Pixies
1990 - Passages, Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass
1991 - Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, Henryk Gorecki
1992 - Whale Music, The Rheostatics
1993 - The Sound of Speed, The Jesus and Mary Chain**
1994 - Bee Thousand, Guided By Voices
1995 - Alien Lanes, Guided By Voices
1996 - Murder Ballads, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds ***
1997 - September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill, Various
1998 - The Italian Flag, Prolapse
1999 - Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada, Godspeed You Black Emperor! ****
2000 - Kid A, Radiohead
2001 - Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward, The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band
2002 - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco
2003 - tie:Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn, Do Make Say Think
2003 - tie: Fever To Tell, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2004 - N'Ecoutez Pas, Fly Pan Am
2005 - No Wow, The Kills ***
2006 - Glissandro 70, Glissandro 70
2007 - Tromatic Reflexxions, Von Südenfed
2008 - Au Contraire, Pas Chic Chic



* (technically, it came out in '74 even though it was recorded in '69)

** (compilations, but I say it's fair)

*** (arguably terrible years for albums, music, and mankind)

**** (of all the years, there was simply nothing I could slot in here that I was really happy with)

Love Letter To Canadian Telecommunication Monopolies

(for those outside of Canada wanting some context for this - click here)

On Bad Fiction

A very good discussion was had recently, prompted by an article on lit-blog Ward Six, called "What makes bad fiction bad?". Not only does the article itself reveal some very big culprits, but the comment board continues with some interesting add-ons (and yes, I had to chime in, though I am not the first "Matt" post - I can't get used to typing that. I always used to be the only "Matt" and now I have to share it!).

Enjoy.

The Lure of the Hammered Dulcimer

I must make an admission.

Even though I'm a writer, even though I work in film and television, even though I take pretty photos with pretty cameras, there is nothing that seeps faster through my skin, as someone who feels for art, as wholly as music. For me it is the ethyl alcohol of expression.

All it takes is a well-played scale in the right key, on the right day, in the right mood, and I'm sold. Here I am, cash in hand! What band is that? Who is that? Some songs attack me unawares with their brilliance, ignobly leaking out of someone's cheap computer speaker from some streaming internet radio station. It's like one of Homer's Sirens, and me without wax to plug my ears or spare hands on the ship's deck to strap me down.

I remember music with succinct precision and stalk it down, if only for information to complete the missing pieces of the what/who/when puzzle I carry with me. I remember being sixteen and regularly hounding the employees at a large record store in Edmonton, asking if they knew of the existence to the soundtrack for the film Brazil (and each time my enthusiasm was met with a resounding "no". It wasn't released until over a decade later, by which time - while thankful for its eventual existence, for sake of people to experience - I was over it, like a scorned lover).

Sometimes there's nothing worse than falling in love only to be separated without details of who or what it was that caught your passion. In the case of music, it's doubly hard because you don't even have the luxury of a face etched in your memory; you are left with something frustratingly abstract: what it sounds like, which by comparison makes paleontology seem straightforward. It's the rootsy, gypsy-sounding piece with the theremin!

A recent example is the not-so-recent film Kafka, by Steven Soderbergh. As a film, it's vivid and engaging, though it suffers from Soderbergh's serial emotionlessness. It was the soundtrack, however, which caught me off-guard. A beautiful piece of work by Cliff Martinez which incorporated Eastern European (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Western-interpreted flavours of Eastern European) motifs performed on a hammered dulcimer. As soon as I heard that instrument, in that evocative score, my attention was rapped. Done. Thank you. Unfortunately, and not unusually, there was no soundtrack issued (when you consider the type of film it was, released by a major Hollywood studio, and how miserably it must've performed in theatres, one can only imagine how the question of "Should we release a soundtrack?" was greeted). On this note, I feel bad for a lot of film and TV composers, or at least the ones whose work transcends the need to only be experienced whilst married to picture and sound effects. If you see a composer on the street, hug him or her. Then ask why the hell they're not in their studios, holding up the mix, working as they should. I digress...

Yesterday I chanced to search for the Kafka soundtrack again, and to my surprise, on Cliff Martinez' website, he has released his music cues for various soundtracks which were never commercially available before (for free, albeit with the proviso that they not be used professionally). I couldn't believe it. I found myself downloading his cues for Kafka in a single Zip file (just under 60 megabytes), and within no time, I'd transferred them to my "portable digital music player".

I ask what more fulfillment you need when you have a hammered dulcimer, its soft yet briskly percussive tones, reminiscent of a harp, in your headphones on the streetcar.

Bliss.

Update - July 7th

A slightly bitter-tasting but substantial smörgåsbord for you today, dear reader...

1. The last week and-a-bit has been a little hard on me. Found out over a week ago that a good work-friend I hadn't been in touch with for a couple of years had passed away in his sleep. By the time I'd found out, the memorial had already happened. Everything that could be done or said had been done and said. And so, one has no choice in this situation but to simply accept the fact that, like it or not, sad or happy, the last chapter in a sub-plot has been written without my consent or input. I think the thing which upsets me most about sudden deaths is the lack of control. I've had relatives who have died of cancer or carried on weakly after a stroke, and it was clear to everyone that the pen nib of fate was scratching out the last bits of their narrative; as the living bereaved, we had time to digest what was happening in our own way. With Trent - my friend and workmate - I was left with nothing but the unavoidable metric truth of his death.


2. Foolishly, perhaps owing to my Chinese astrological tendencies (Dog), I've been patiently waiting for a response from a Toronto lit mag to get back to me on a short fiction submission I'd mailed to them almost a year ago. Owing to fatigue, I finally emailed the editor last week, only to find out from his response that "We would have responded to that a very long time ago, so I'm assuming it got lost in the mail/E-mail. I'm also assuming it was our response that got lost, and not your submission, as the title sounds familiar. ". So, in other words, I'd wasted a year not submitting the (admittedly solid) piece elsewhere. This upset me to no end. Nobody likes to be rejected - something I've accustomed myself to - but in this case I was left wondering whether they'd actually bothered to send anything out. I don't lose incoming mail, nor is my email spam filter so prejudiced as to reject anything addressed directly to me (unless of course they put something like "rejection letter for Cialis" in the subject header). I drank a lot that night and complained bitterly to friends who consoled me, particularly those who caught my Facebook status message: "Matt wonders what could be worse than finding out a form rejection letter with your name on it got lost in the mail."


3. Not willing to let "the shit" (he says, in the collective sense) get me down, I continued to revise the novel, having finished going through to the (current) ending, thus completing my first full pass on the book as a whole. I immediately went back to the beginning, which I'd barely looked at in months, and started full-revision #2. I think it's coming together nicely, and the feedback I've received on excerpts given to my peers in the writing group I run have been very positive. I just wish there was someone I could bribe in order to get one of my short fiction pieces published, because it's a bit of a hindrance approaching an editor with a novel having a big fat "0" in the previously-published department. I'm also looking at doing more story submissions to non-Canadian publishers, as I find the atmosphere in this country a little stifling. Make of that what you will.


4. A good tonic for these doldrums was to be had when my wife and I took a drive through the Niagara peninsula (after an absurdist trip to Niagara Falls - don't bother asking - thankfully, we had two good friends to help us drink away the memories). We both love wine, and as firm supporters of Canadian wineries it was great to get out (only an hour's drive from the city) and see the vinyards, the countryside, and quaff vast amounts of the best vino North America has to offer. So much so, in fact, that I've considered starting a new blog specifically geared towards Canadian wine. We shall see.
   

Happy Canada Day