Saturday, September 30, 2006
American Outlaws
Watched this movie again the other night for at least the forth time. It’s not hard to cheer for someone who gave banks and land-grabbing railway speculators a hard time. As portrayed here it would seem even Pinkerton, the man hired to capture Jesse James, admired him. Pinkerton had lots of company as the James-Younger gang walked the streets of their home town with impunity.
A reading of T. J. Styles’ biography of Jesse James would lead one to decide that the creators of this movie took the usual Hollywood liberties with the facts. I’ll not dwell on details here; the appeal of this movie is the camaraderie and by-play between the characters in this story. The steady, Shakespeare-quoting Frank and the charismatic wiseacre Jesse, Colin Farrell seems type-cast to play. Heck, they almost make bank robbing look like fun.
With the exception of Jim Younger very few people we care about actually get killed here. It’s hard to believe that with the amount of lead flying here so few people actually get hurt. In many ways this is a horse opera where whipping your horse in a chase scene predated putting the pedal to the metal. With the exception of the long-suffering Zee we don’t see the people who waited and worried back home, the nights spent hiding in the bush in the rain, the cold meals in a hastily assembled hide-out. And we get a Hollywood ending.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Indian Summer
We’ve all heard the one about ‘based on a true story’, but there really is a private camp named Camp Tamakwa in Algonquin Park and you can still go there:
Even more remarkable is the fact that most of the characters depicted here were real campers there as were many of the people who portrayed them. The ‘rigors’ of camp life are graphically illustrated—the smell of urine in the cabins that nothing can remove, the staffer who drops your luggage in the lake, the practical jokes, the cook who flicks her cigarette ash in the mashed potatoes, the morning bell, the moose that appears on cue—that last may be a mite fanciful. Can you imagine spending eight weeks there?
This is no church youth camp such as I attended. The owner is an ex-boxer who has a working ring set up on site, the campers have sail boats at their disposal, they arrive by water taxi in a 30 foot boat, the place is co-ed! It’s been there for 70 years. Summer camp is one of those experiences that everyone grouses about but fondly remembers. Despite all the “Big Chill” like resonances this movie captures the feeling of the summer camp experience, right down to the end credits which are back grounded by the singing of “Camp Bernarda”.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Maurice Richard The Rocket
It is a sad truth that one does not associate the term CBC with great movies, in fact Canadian Movie is often a pejorative term for low production values or second rate. It is also a fact of life that the most successful movies in Canada are produced and screened in Quebec where the language barrier serves to insulate them from the juggernaut that is Hollywood. Recent examples include “Bon Cop Bad Cop” and the present movie which were wildly popular in La Belle Province and virtually unknown in the rest of Canada.
If I have to tell you who Maurice The Rocket Richard was then don’t bother reading any further. However it was my admiration for Roy Dupuis, who plays him, that was the deciding factor in my picking up this movie. Who else to play a great French Canadian but a great French-Speaking actor, albeit one born in the Northern Ontario town of New Liskard? Again, if not for his work on La Femme Nakita, he’s unknown in the English world.
This then is a movie shot in Quebecois Dialect and dubbed into English. One other quirk; after the opening warnings and proprietary images we arrive at a screen back-grounded by music that reads:
| MAURICE RICHARD THE ROCKET |
I’m not qualified to comment on how well the game of hockey is portrayed here but I’ll edit this later to add comments after I’ve finished watching the movie.
How to Create An American Quilt
It is a dis-heartening experience to go back and look at the reviews for a movie one particularly liked and discover that the professional reviewers were particularly unkind in discussing it. (Not nearly so as for those who made it, mind you.) But then quilts are not made by big city movie editors and neither was this movie.
I’ve grown up around quilt makers and actually sewn some stitches myself. Quilts are patched together from remnants of worn out clothing that still have wear left in them. For everyday use there are “patchwork” quilts; but for sophisticates the number of patterns and indeed pattern books is endless. The quilt being created in this movie is a collection of blocks created by each of the quilters from pieces of fabric that were once clothing they wore and each fabric or pattern is freighted with memories of the experiences they had when they wore them. 
The movie itself is “quilted” together from the memories these fabrics evoke in each of the ladies who contribute.
Finn, the narrator of the piece is a spoiled, self-indulgent brat dumped on her grandmother from her earliest years by her whacky flower-child mother. She is struggling to commit herself to a thesis, to her boy-friend, to growing up…. Dermot Mulroney, the long-suffering boy-friend has a minor role here; Johnathon Schaech, of the protruding pecs, is the summer fling. Knowing the value of a quilt and the months of work that goes into making one I find it a telling commentary on Finn’s character that she places so little value on this freshly finished, difficult to wash, heirloom that she wraps it round her and drags it through the red soil of the fruit orchard that surrounds her home.
