Fall Season Parody at the CBC I

This is funny

Rick Mercer, the quintessential Canadian America-basher, who manages to cajole politicians into doing embarrassing things, has somehow got Conrad Black to be his pool boy. Now, that could have been funny in itself, but what makes Mercer ever pathetic is his deferential "Lord Black" when he addresses the soon-to-be-jailed-non-Canadian-citizen (quite a mouthful, worthy of a...) British Lord. "Connie", replies the Lord, dryly.

Mercer has hours of parody (his version, anyway) of Black, when Black was a successful, not quite that rich business man and galloping around the world giving soirées with his wife. But that all changed when Black started his bitter fight with the American justice system. That is when Mercer became his ally.

Black must be cursing the days when he has to bow down to the likes of Mercer, on a show he probably hates, in order to get the sympathy of the Canadian audience.

Too late, though. The wheel is already rolling.

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Toronto's Latest Casualty

To urban "development"

This lovely house



which became my inspiration for this rendition



and later on this repeat pattern design



became yet another casualty in the Toronto architectural landscape sometime last summer.



And just as I predicted, a condo-style building is rising up to accommodate all those mystery tenants, and progress is going fine, as of September 2007.



I've blogged about it, and those suspicious new tenants here.

Funny how intuition works sometimes. I wonder who will thank me for making a historical record

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The Global Film Festival

A.k.a. The Toronto International Film Festival

Well, TIFF lives up to its international name.

The winner of the Festival is a film by a Canadian director, whose story is based in London (England, that is, not Ontario) about a Russian mafia group, with an unwatchable fight scene in a Turkish bath. This from the director who gave us The History of Violence in last year's festival.

We were also graced with a new film by Ang Lee (of Brokeback Mountain fame). But this time he comes to Toronto with a Venice Festival win of a Chinese crime story set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, with more unwatchable scenes.

There is also the $10,00 winner of the Telefilm Canada Pitch 2005 which is an incomprehensible, Hindi, film set in India directed by an "Indo-Canadian." The director, Ritchie Mehta, is no relation of Deepa Mehta, whose film Water was chosen as the "Canadian Film" gala opener at TIFF 2005. Water is about the fate of Hindu widows in the holy city Varanasi, with an Indian cast, and in Hindi. Real Indians protested to its filming on location, calling it sacrilegious, and shut down the production, so Mehta had to film it in Sri Lanka.

Modern films have no sense of place. They instead resort to violence, fantasy, or sacrilege to fill in the empty gaps. If the audience can be thrilled or transported, then reality and geography can be ignored without anyone missing them, or recognizing their absence.

Toronto is becoming exemplary at showing us films with these deficits. But, of course, to the film goers and filmmakers, this is no deficit. Film, after all, to them, is the ultimate fantasy.

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The Holy as Transparent

Like a gemstone



The Holy is transparent, whereas the unholy is opaque.

And that which is in the middle, which can go either way, is neutral.

This is the discussion of a couple of Rabbis at this weekly show.

I think the idea of gemstones (or stones in general) wonderfully explains this concept.

A beautifully cut gem, like a diamond or an aquamarine, gives so much pleasure to our eyes because it is so transparent. The more transparent, the more expensive. What gives it this transparency is the work that went into making it so faceted. Holiness requires work to achieve its perfect transparency.

Those uncut gemstones, which have the potential to be worked on to be transparent (cabochons for the precious stones, and others like turquoise or lapis lazuli) are less attractive to us because of their middle-ground. But, we still desire them because we see the potential in them.

Yet, sometimes what looks like a potential turquoise can end up looking like an opaque pebble. We are least attracted to this pebble, and most likely to discard it at some point.

And that is exactly what the judicious Rabbis say. The opaque requires no judgment. They call it evil at one point, but prefer in the end to describe it as something which wouldn't bring us closer to God, and therefore something to be discarded.

On a more practical level, evil (the opaque) always leaves us questioning and probing (why, how what, etc...) whereas we marvel at the clarity of Holiness.

But, rather than judge it with our limited capacity, it is better to leave the opaque aside, and concentrate instead on the Holiness that is in front of us.

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Dance Patterns and Designs

In "Becoming Jane" and "Hairspray"

Choreography must be like putting a design pattern onto fabric. There is this stretch of space (the fabric) which must be filled with as many moves as possible (the patterns) to produce an overall design.

This is how I envision the dances in Jane Austin's books, which figure frequently in her stories and are shown briefly in the pseudo-autobiography film Becoming Jane.

Austen's dances, known as English Country Dance, are all about pattern, geometry and a cohesive design.

But, they're also a social commentary, as I describe in this blog entry. There is a restrained, formal, interaction between the man and his female partner and between the various couples to finally form an ephemeral design that weaves in and out of pattern.

This is similar to some of the choreography in Hairspray. The director and choreographer, Adam Shankman, talks about forming patterns during his creative process. And the dances are very similar to the English Country Dances, except of course the music is more exuberant, and the steps more boisterous. But that's another issue.

But, even Shankman distinguishes between the black dances and the ones performed by the white kids. As Shankman explains, he got the ideas for the choreography of the black dances from a friend whose parents lived in that era (late 50s early 60s.)

The black dances have less form and shape, and finally very little pattern. Since Shankman is choreographing using his own (white) background, he still puts some element of design and form into these dances, but much less than what he does in the white dances.

And the white dances are more interesting, more complex, and more "artistic."

Despite Hairspray's attempt to put the story's emphasis on the "redemption of black people," at the very creative level, where peculiarities really cannot be changed, it is the white choreography that excels.

I think blacks really couldn’t care less if their dances are choreographed or not. So, the superiority of the white dances isn’t even considered. But, Shankman’s structure, which he put on all the dances, makes the film much more interesting for the viewer. And probably helps to sell the film as well.

Here is movie clip of a Quadrille, which is a later invention, but still has the same elements of form, pattern and design as English Country Dance.

Patterns of English Country Dance.
From: Plan and construction of a Country Dance

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