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Go Further

Go Further In 2001 Woody Harrelson went on a tour to promote environmentally-friendly alternatives to our destructive lifestyle. Travelling in a bio-fueled bus and on bicycles, they went down the Pacific coast of California and Ron Mann made a film about that tour. Go Further skillfully combines a road movie with personal stories about how you can change your lifestyle and change the world. The ideas within the film are more fully explained and explored at Woody Harrelson and Laura Louie’s Voice Yourself site about sustainable living and reducing your environmental footprint. A film about doing the right thing can be didactic or boring, but Mann wisely builds the story of Go Further around people and their relationships. Instead of having the focus on Harrelson, it is on Steve Clark, who joins the tour and tries to give up his fast-food lifestyle. It’s a fun and entertaining documentary that educates along the way. I had a lot of fun and it gave me a few ideas as well.

July 26, 2005 documentary, dvd, film, gofurther, review, ronmann

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Tim Burton brings his quirky and distinctive style to Roald Dahl‘s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s a wild and wacky ride of a movie that is much closer to the sensibilities of Dahl than the earlier and more musical Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Burton teams up again with Johnny Depp who plays Wonka as a slightly creepy man who has spent too many years inside a chocolate factory. There are wonderfully twisted touches throughout the film and the incredible attention to production design that is a hallmark of Burton films.
Charlie Bucket’s family is very poor, but happy. All four of his grandparents live with him and his parents in an impossibly crooked house that looks as if it is located in a bomb crater. They make the best of things as they struggle away in the shadow of the enormous candy factory. The Dickensian crowded house with little food provides a stark contrast with the colours and sweetness of the candy that comes out of the factory.
The characters are heavily stylized to the point of being cartoonish. I don’t know if it’s a combination of makeup and colour-correction, but there is an air of unreality to the characters. They are instantly recognizable for what they represent. The children and parents who tour the factory each represent parenting styles and character types. In some ways the whole story can be viewed as a lighter version of Dante‘s Inferno with Hell as a chocolate factory. As each child is punished, the Oompah Loompahs (all played by Deep Roy) sing a song (with lyrics by Dahl) about the sins and predicament that the child is in. The singing is accompanied by elaborate production numbers with music (and vocals) by Danny Elfman. Each production number is done in a different style with a particular music and visual style. There is an infectious energy and sense of fun to the production numbers that more than make up for any of the uneven parts of the film.
I loved the film and it’s a perfect for summer with Tim Burton getting back to a lighter, funnier tone.
tags: charlieandthechocolatefactory, review, film, timburton

July 16, 2005 film, review, timburton

Strangers With Candy

If you’re gonna reach for a star, reach for the lowest one you can.

How did I miss this? In 1999 Comedy Central began airing Strangers With Candy, a very dark comedy set within the framework of an after-school special. The series was created and written by Mitch Rouse, Paul Dinello (who played the art teacher), Stephen Colbert (who played the history teacher), and Amy Sedaris (who played central character Jerri Blank). I had vaguely known about it earlier, but it wasn’t until I heard an interview with Colbert (whose work on The Daily Show is brilliant), where he talked about Strangers With Candy, that I wanted to see it. The way that he described it was that it was an after-school special where all of the characters consistently make the wrong decision.
It falls within the genre of cringe comedy and in some ways could be seen as a precursor for Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Office (at least in terms of preparing people for it). As with both of those later shows, it took me a while to understand the show and figure out the rhythms of it. My initial reaction with all of those shows was not to really like it, but after I figured it out they became some of my favourite shows. Within all of the shows a common thread in the central characters is a lack of self-awareness combined with a selfishness. Strangers With Candy has an absurd level that takes it beyond the documentary styles of the other shows.
The central conceit of Strangers With Candy is that Jerri Blank, a self-described “boozer, user and loser” who returns to complete high-school at age 46 after running away and having a life of drug abuse, crime and prostitution. Nobody notices or mentions that she’s nearly 30 years older than her classmates as she deals with typical high-school after-school special problems every week. Jerri Blank’s years of experience haven’t changed her much and she still has an odd innocence and lack of social skills. Jerri has no filters and she interacts with her classmates, teachers and family (all stereotypes) and learns all of the wrong lessons.
The framework of the show follows the tried-and-true after-school special delivering valuable messages, but sprinkled throughout the series are great sight gags and characters. Principal Onxy Blackman (played by Greg Holliman, is an authoritarian principal who has his image scattered throughout the school and speaks in bizarre metaphors and has secret doorways in his office. At one point he says, “I’m an obtuse man, so I’ll try to be oblique.” The strange non-sequiturs extend to the end credits, which consist of cast members dancing to different songs as the credits roll.
I’ve watched the first two of three seasons and the second season really clicked for me. In the first season it felt a bit uneven and Jerri Blank is a difficult character to warm up to. Amy Sedaris is remarkable as Blank. Her face distorts in ways that don’t seem humanly possible and with odd physical and verbal tics, she creates a singular character who is somewhat repulsive, but still strangely interesting.
tags: dvd, review, strangerswithcandy

July 15, 2005 dvd, review, strangerswithcandy, tv

Transatlanticism

This is the moment that you know
That you told her that you loved her but you don’t.

Gentle, understated and evocative are the lyrics and music of Death Cab for Cutie. I first heard Ben Gibbard’s voice and lyrics through The Postal Service and I just bought (from the iTunes Music Store) Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie. At times I feel as if I’m reading the journal of a slightly-angst-ridden young man (which could have been me at one point). A beautiful mingling of sweetness and pain.
There is no shortage of angst out there, but the magic touch that Gibbard seems to bring is the way that the lyrics meet the music and how his voice shapes those words. It’s very difficult to explain in words and it’s probably the type of thing that you’ll either like or not, but it really works for me. The song Tiny Vessels is one of my instant favourites with a brutal honesty in the lyrics and a simple musical arrangement that builds to something larger and more complex. The album is filled with songs that mix pop-sensibilities with angst into songs that aren’t top 40 singles, but aren’t musically obscure.
With a new album out next month and a touring DVD out in a couple of weeks, Death Cab for Cutie will probably be mentioned here again soon…

July 12, 2005 deathcabforcutie, music, review

Podcasting, iTunes and Odeo

I’ve been listening to podcasts since last Fall and now that I have an iPod Shuffle, I’m listening to podcasts in a pod-like way instead of via burned CDs in the car or through the computer speakers. While I’ve been telling people about podcasting for a while, my less technologically experimental friends haven’t taken the time to download beta software and dig around to find things to listen to. With the introduction of podcast support in iTunes, things have changed dramatically.
Podcasting makes a lot more sense to more people all of a sudden. The podcasts that I love are personal and are done by people who care. Passion is the key ingredient. Many of the podcasts that I listen to I found through blogs or from mentions somewhere, and not through a guide. In the iTunes guide to podcasting there doesn’t seem to be a lot of independent stuff. In fact, there is a lot of Disney there with ABC or ESPN (both Disney properties) in all of the news slots. One of my favourite podcasts – Vu d’ici – Seen From Here by M-C Turgeon – is classified as an “Audio Blog”, but if I had to narrow it down, I’d probably put it under “Music”. M-C is annoyed at the iTunes thing and doesn’t want those commercial, slick and boring podcasts.
A really interesting thing that I noticed is that after listening to podcasts via the iTunes guide, a friend of mine asked where he could find the real indie podcasts made by people in their basements. I think that people will want to wander outside of the slick guides and find things that really connect with them. The iTunes guide is a good place to start and I hope that more people go outside of it (or even realize that they can add whatever feeds they want).
A very encouraging development is Odeo, which just opened up a bit more today. At first they’re providing a guide and a way to subscribe to podcasts. Later they’ll be providing podcasting tools to let you create your own podcasts. I’m testing the beta subscription thing now and I like it. You can listen to podcasts on pages on the site and add comments about podcasts which can help you figure out whether you’ll like the podcast or not. I didn’t use it for a while after the new version of iTunes came out, but now I’m back to use it. A very good sign is that they’re changing things quickly at Odeo and it’s very easy to add your Odeo subscriptions into iTunes through an RSS feed that is generated. So now I have the best of both worlds.
What makes me more excited about Odeo are the possibilities of community and more feedback that it provides. The other thing that will help people find podcasts that they like is the support of tagging in Odeo. Tagging and folksonomies are what allow many connections to be made in systems like del.icio.us and Flickr, and it will help a lot with podcasting. Instead of a gatekeeper coming up with a way to categorize podcasts (hmmm… “music” or “audio blog”…) the people who produce and listen to the podcasts add tags to categorize it themselves. That’s the way to do it. Down the road another feature for Odeo that I can see is people subscribing to certain tags via RSS feeds to be able to find new and interesting things.
We’re moving out of the first stages of podcasting much as independent film did a few years ago. While now there are films with massive, multimillion dollar budgets that are called “independent”, there still is a difference between a film with a marketing budget of several millions and a film made by people with a passion to tell a story and little or no money. That’s not to say that people can’t do good work for money in either podocasts or filmmaking, but the key is striking a balance and telling a story or creating something that connects with people on a personal level. Without passion you don’t have much and that’s what interests me in anything I consume.

July 9, 2005 itunes, music, odeo, podcasting

Take the Money and Run

Take the Money and Run One of the things about subscribing to a movies-by-mail service like Zip.ca is that my obsessive tendencies in watching films can be catered to. So one of the things that I’m doing is going through and adding many older films and collections of films. One of the collections that I’m going through are the early films of Woody Allen and I started with Take the Money and Run, which was his first feature film that he wrote, directed and acted in from 1969. Done in mockumentary style, it’s filled with bits of Allen’s standup and elements that show up in his later work. There are some great sight gags, non-sequiturs and strange situations. At times there is a feeling similar to later comedies such as Airplane! While it is a comedy, the skill in the film is how the cast plays it completely straight which allows Allen to riff and inject jokes into the scenes. The film also features one of my all-time favourite comedy scenes where Allen gives a note to a bank teller who has trouble reading it. The absurdity builds as the teller calls other coworkers over to help him decipher the note as Allen patiently waits and tries to explain.
Structurally it’s more of a parody of prison and crime films, there are some nice moments between the characters that suggest elements that emerge in his later films. The film holds up very well with very few jokes that require a great deal of knowledge of the time. It’s fascinating (and very funny) to see the early work of a director after seeing much of their later work.

July 8, 2005 comedy, dvd, film, review, woodyallen

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