Mountain Views

My trip to New York took me through the Adirondack and the Pocono Mountains. Here are just a few shots I took of those spectacular views. Fall must be the crowning glory of those mountains.

More posts to follow on the trip.

Updates

And apologies

I've been quite busy these past few days preparing for a project (numerous, actually), so I apologize for my sparse posts. In fact, this won't change much over the next few days.

In the meantime, here are some posts I'm working on:

- Who was the real Annie Le?

- Review of a delightful documentary The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story about the prolific duo who gave us so many musicals such as Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and the list goes on.

- My recent attendance of my former professor's presentation on how (and why) he made his latest experimental/art film. At Q&A I was the only one to pose a question, but I will be discussing that further, and why I find the answer Mr. Elder gave me inadequate.

- And please take a look at The Thinking Housewife's demure explanation of the "O-Movement." Of course, the original O-Movement was formed by our very own Ms. Oprah Winfrey, who tries very hard never to be lewd, and whose pleasures seem to lean towards the sensual. I'm beginning to realize that our Original O is quite prudish - but that is for another post and another discussion.

Oprah and Martha

Dark and Light


Popular television hosts need something which attracts their viewers back, again and again. Martha Stewart does this with her meticulous "home shows," which range from cooking segments to craft demonstrations. Martha brings in expert guests for almost all her shows. But, she's no detached hostess. She herself can cook up sophisticated dishes and arrange a beautiful bouquet of flowers, as good as many of her experts.

Oprah, on the other hand, invites guests and tries to get into their psyche: why were they drug addicts? What made them kill their wife, their daughter, the random stranger? How does a person survive, and overcome, a devastating disfigurement like the loss of limbs during an accident, or even a whole face after a shooting incident with one's husband (the topic of one of her new shows in the fall season)?

Martha goes for the outward, visible light. Oprah narrows in on the invisible, interior darkness. Oprah knows best how to delve into people’s heart, to get a glimpse of their scarred souls.

This is what she did during the two-episode interview of Whitney Houston. Whitney, after years of a terrible marriage during which she made terrible decisions, including a descent into drug addiction, came out of it looking stunning - slim, youthful and beautiful. Oprah, stodgy and overweight, sat across her with her questions ready at hand.

Whitney, in her happiness at her recovery and at returning to her beloved fans once again, answered Oprah's probing questions with candor. She fully trusted Oprah, and was willing to answer questions she was clearly uncomfortable with. And Oprah probed on, with a strange fearful look in her eyes, unable to keep up with the superior force of the happy and buoyant Whitney, whose spirit was of someone who had truly survived and shelved the inner demons away.

I wondered why Oprah had that startled, frightened expression in her eyes throughout the interview. I think it is because she is used to reaching, at some point, that dark and unsettled corner of her guests' souls. She's used to the darkness, and not the light. I think Whitney derailed her. She expected something much more negative from Whitney, and despite the sad and tortuous story that Whitney related, all she got was something positive instead.

Oprah can rule with negativity. She can continue confidently with her questions. She is superior to her guests on whom she can then bestow her empathy. "You can get better. I know, I've been there, and look at me now," she seems to be saying, and continues with her interrogation. Yet, with Whitney, the truly happy newly formed Whitney, she couldn't find this dark corner at which she can ever so generously throw her empathy. Whitney had indeed crawled out of her dark soul and reached the light. And Whitney’s frankness about her past, which she discarded into the open like a dried corpse, left little for Oprah to delve into.

I realized later how much probing Oprah had tried to do when Whitney came on live on Oprah's show after the end of the pre-taped interview. Whitney was detached, and distanced herself from Oprah. And Oprah's narcissistic radar picked up this recoil, and rather than welcome Whitney as best as she could (like a true hostess), she asked, "Did you regret doing the interview?" Whitney was clearly upset that she had said (or been baited into saying) too much, but in her wisdom, realized that she needn't revisit this painful past again for future inquiring and curious fans. But Oprah, predictably, was the buoyant one this time, realizing that she had indeed gone further than she had thought, had delved deeper and found more hurtful corners than she had expected. So this was one more successful interview, by Oprah's standards.

But Whitney has indeed overcome her dark past, however much it is possible to close off fourteen years of one's life. Oprah would be better advised to see how Whitney, with her bible close to her heart, came to this victory, rather than return to her addictive circular probings of people's unresolved miseries.

Such is the crippling psychology of Oprah, the Queen of Narcissism, who cannot shake off her own dark and tragic background – because that's what it’s all about - and has to revisit it with her guests daily, monthly, ad infinitum, in her ceaseless attempt to understand it. Perhaps she should opt for the truly positive, productive and lively shows that Martha Stewart brings, who like most human beings resolves her tragedies in private and decides to focus on the beauty of life rather than its dark and inert recesses.

Charm and Mischief at One Hundred

Manoel de Oliveira's sparkling, winking gem of a movie

Flying Pigeons, from Getty Images by Evan Kafka

The entry ticket for films at the Toronto International Film Festival is a bit stiff, even for hard-to-find movies, so I had to do a bit of intuitive work and make a quick decision to make my one choice for this season. I had planned to watch a series of very short experimental (or art) films, mainly this one, described as:

[A] meticulous digital painting, offering one minute, one second and one frame of shimmering and breathtaking beauty through its diaphanous and forever-changing palette.

At times I feel that such filmmakers are really stuck in the experimental phase. "A forever-changing palette?" Isn't it time to get out of the palette and go into some depictions? But, I can imagine that it is beautiful.

Well, tickets were sold out, so I had to think fast - the days were numbered, after all.

Recently, I had watched Fellini's And the Ship Sails On which I describe as:

Sometimes, as filmmakers get older, they infuse a certain innocent, childlike charm into their films.

I remembered seeing Manoel de Oliveira in the TIFF program. He is one of those underrated masters - an unknown Fellini. I had watched a film of his made in 2006, which made him 97 years old! That short little film, Belle Toujours, which I review here, surprised me for its lightness and mischief. The main character, "[an] old man, now in his late seventies, [who] is clearly enjoying life with his cigars and whisky," was the uncontested star. But, besides this light heartedness, I recognized de Oliveira's love for sumptuous interiors, which he shoots in rich saturated colors, and a certain moral probing.

Now de Oliveira is back with this new film - Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl. That makes him 100 years old! Surely this will be a treasure, full of light touches, rich colors, a revival of aesthetics and more of his subtle nudge at morality (or immorality, as the case may be), in the sharp mischievous way that only very old folks can deliver.

This short one-hour movie was an adaptation of a short story about human frailties, deceptions and resilience, packaged in the beautiful city of Lisbon. It is a small, glittering gemstone, which winks at us.

Some memorable scenes:

* What looks like a still photograph of a tightly cropped clock tower and streetlight comes to life as pigeons fly into the air and across the tower. A flat image suddenly becomes cinematic, and even dramatic.

* Across the narrow street from Macário’s, the protagonist’s, room live a mother and her daughter. Macário can see them as they move across the window, or stand by the small balcony to view the street life below. As Macário imagines how beautiful and full of life the mother must have been in her younger days, the airy curtain is blown aside by a small breeze to disclose a portrait, clearly of the mother in her younger days, hanging in the back of the room.

* De Oliveira warns us of the blonde girl from the very beginning (although we soon forget). As she realizes that Macário is watching her from the room across the street, her young and innocent face assumes a calculating and seductive expression.

* Every scene, interior or exterior, is filled with beauty: in the furniture, the paintings, the streets, and the buildings. Even the rooming house where Macário ends up for a while has its own austere beauty.

* Clair de Lune is played on the harp during an evening of culture and poetry at the home of a rich man. Macário and Luísa are both there, where Macário declares his infatuation for Luísa. Surely, this famous Debussy piece is in honor of Luísa.

* Shots of Lisbon by the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, in full warm daylight, or in the evening hours illuminated by building and streetlights, appear regularly throughout the film.

I’ve dealt mostly with the images in the film. The story is equally compelling. It is much more austere, yet the sparseness of the story contrasts well with the sumptuous visuals. And despite its uncompromising nature, the story is a kind of a morality tale, where Macário can become a better person if he is willing to learn.

Perhaps people who live in such magnificent surroundings, despite their mundane, and even cruel, lives are urged to reach for better and elevated things, fortified by the beauty of their surroundings.

Here are two other movies by Manoel de Oliveira that I have reviewed:
- Belle Toujours
- The Fifth Empire - Yesterday as Today

Is David Frum Trying to Make American Conservatives into Canadian Conservatives?

I think he's simply a careerist elitist

Here is an article about David Frum's website The New Majority, and his "new conservatism," by American Thinker writer J. R. Dunn.

The article distinguishes between the American and Canadian character, which I think is correct, and discusses how Frum’s Canadianness obstructs his view on American conservatism. But, I don't think that is how Frum sees things.

I think that Frum, like many conservatives in the U.S. and Canada, and probably in Europe too, is just sliding ever closer to the liberal state of mind. But I don't think he was a genuine conservative to start with.

Frum in a CBC interview of him soon after his book Comeback Conservatism that Can Win Again came out in 2008, talks about a new type of conservatism. He says the following in the interview:

We're moving toward new formations, not conservatism as we've known it, and not liberalism either... and there are going to be big prizes for the people who can figure out how to get there first.

So, these new "formations" are neither conservative nor liberal, and in fact the compensation for those that come up with this new movement is...big prizes.

I think Frum is actually a careerist, and an elitist. That together with his liberalism, which shows its face regularly, makes him unable to accept true conservatism. I remember reading somewhere that he thinks conservatives should reconsider homosexual marriage. That was about the time when I stopped taking him seriously.

But, what about the elitist part? Dunn is correct in saying that Frum doesn't relate to ordinary Americans, and uses Sarah Palin as the example. I don't think Frum dislikes Palin because she represents the "Yanks [who] are simply a louder and more rash version of anybody you’d find above the 49th," nor is it for any principled reason relating to her tenuous conservative positions, but simply because he is an elitist. I think it is the same reason he dislikes Rush Limbaugh.

Frum recently wrote in the National Post:

[We] are afraid that Palin's distinctive combination of sex appeal, self-pity, and cultural resentment has a following in today's GOP.

Nothing about Sarah’s ideas or positions on conservatism; all about the superficial Palin effect.

Elitism, these days, I think is a liberal trait. Those loud and raucous conservatives, wherever they may be, need the civilizing presence of elitist careerists liberals like Frum. Of course, in Canada, one will be hard pressed to find such raucous conservatives, and it is these elitist liberal Canadians who want to teach those conservative Americans a lesson or two on decorum.

So Frum’s talent might be most beneficial south of the 49th, where there are more of those rambunctious conservatives to civilize. In fact, he is now an American citizen – after a long American residency. With his new website, and his quest for a new movement, he is setting the stage for a new and prosperous career.

Frum isn’t really inventing anything new, or corrupting Americans with the passivity and liberalism of his native Canada. I think he’s just gauging the direction of the wind to make sure that he is as relevant today as he was yesterday. In that regard, he might be one less Canadian Americans can do with.

Fellini and Music

But his first love is film

A musical interlude on wineglasses

I recently watched Fellini's And the Ship Sails on once again. Sometimes, as filmmakers get older, they infuse a certain innocent, childlike charm into their films. This is what Fellini did so delightfully in his film about a cruise ship’s funereal sail to the home island of a deceased opera singer, where her ashes are to be thrown. It all sounds heavy-handed, but as I said, nothing could be more lighthearted (and serious, as only the lighthearted can be) than And the Ship Sails on. Here is a long, and well written, synopsis of the film.

But, as complex as the film is – I never said Fellini opted for mindless simplicity in this film - one of the themes that permeates throughout is music. And how music (according to Fellini, anyway) is the great leveler - of peoples, of races, of love and even in death. And we're taken in during those moments of musical cinematography.

* In the enchanting sequence of the "wine glass concerto" Fellini, in his mischievous humor, has two cranky musicians perform their piece in the kitchen, with cooks and aristocrats listening and applauding.

* The ship's upper class, mostly musicians and artists, decide to go down to the netherworlds of the boiler room. One of the laborers asks them to sing. This sets off a rivalry between the singers - like some kind of operatic duel. But, still in this moment of aggression and competition, the beautiful music shines through, and the laborers below cheer with appreciation.

* Serb refugees, who magically appear on the ship's lower deck, are joined with the ship's regular passengers, in an exotic dance to Serbian folk music.

* And near the end, there is the scene of the young concert conductor, who is obsessed with the deceased opera singer. As I wrote in my first blog on this film:

The most whimsical [scene] is the resurrection of the dead diva through a film projector, obsessively hand cranked by a deeply admiring conductor.

As her silent image (paradoxically, for this singing star) flickers in black and white on the makeshift screen of scarves strewn across a rectangular shape, the lovely, light music of Debussy's piano suite "Clair de Lune" provides the perfect sound.

All this while the ship is sinking.

A makeshift screen for the film projection in a sinking ship

This is Fellini's beautiful conjoining of film and music, of sound and image, of color and black and white. And it is also a concise condensation of his portentous outlook of where all this might lead us (this film is set in the months before WWI). I think it is the most memorable scene of the whole film.

And from this scene, it is obvious that Fellini's first, and true, love is film. He bookends his film with black and white silent shots of him and his crew, replete with cameras and stage sets, in the process of filming. This is done as though in memory of the early, soundless era of the first films. An era in which the actual story of the film is set, albeit in full sumptuous color.

Well Done!

Americans won't let their country run away from them

When Americans insist on being American, it is an example to the rest of the world.

This weekend's march in Washington was one of the most exhilarating things I have ever watched. Finally, a people that won't let its country run away from its principles. Americans refuse to behave like the suicidal Europeans, and the passive Canadians. And they should be an example to all.

Meanwhile, here in Canada, universal health care was snuck up on the people. Actually, the doctors put up a fight initially, but ultimately the people's psyche wasn't able to overcome this socialist intrusion. Some say that the cold winters and huge landscape require a particular type of cooperation amongst people, which set the stage for government interventions to enforce this cooperation. But, rugged individualism is not thwarted by the weather, or the sparseness or breadth of the landscape. I think it is something more fundamental, some inability to grow up, something in the psyche that is still clinging on to bigger authority, that induces one socialist scheme after another in Canada. After all, Canada is still part of the British Commonwealth.

I cannot ever see such a popular movement coming out of Canada as the one we saw (barely - news coverage here was at a minimum) in Washington this weekend. Canadians are partly too self-conscious to go out on such a march. But, they also inherently believe in the system, however much they may talk about changing it. It has become a kind of addiction - like any welfare system. That, and fear of the unknown (how will we pay the bills?) keeps Universal Health Care a bastion of Canadian identity.

Still,  some are hopeful that with bursts of private systems here and there, this behemoth will slowly be eroded. But, I wouldn’t count on it. The Conservative Party, the party most likely to turn things around (somewhat), is forced by popular demand to abandon many conservative principles, and is slowly becoming a centrist government. I don’t think Canada even has a right-oriented party anymore. And unless some outrageous incident provokes the anger of ordinary Canadians (it has happened before!), such a turnaround is but a dream.

So, universal health care, with its constant horror stories, is here to stay. And huge marches, demanding that big government remove itself from people's decisions, will never happen.