Toronto – Set against the backdrop of the Edinburgh rave scene, Ecstasy tells the story of aging clubber Lloyd (Adam Sinclair) and his growing romance with Heather (Kristin Kreuk).  It’s an entertaining story and the cast is all pretty solid, but I do have to say that it was a little odd for me to see the Canadian actors in the cast all putting on Scottish accents.  Not that they were bad accents, but it is a little weird nonetheless.  In fact, one of the few not speaking with an accent was Kreuk, whose character was Canadian.  I don’t know if this detail is in the original story or not, but if it was added, I assume it was one of two reasons – either director Rob Heydon wanted to add some Canadian content to his film or Kreuk couldn’t do a good Scottish accent.

Ecstasy is based on a short story by Irvine Welsh, best known as the author of Trainspotting, which was famously adapted to film in 1996.  Trainspotting was a fairly successful and influential film.  It had a lot of visual flair and inspired a lot of filmmakers.  It certainly seems to have had an influence on Toronto filmmaker Heydon.  Not only has he made a film based on another Irvine Welsh story, but Ecstasy also seems to borrow a lot stylistically from Danny Boyle’s film.  The voiceovers, the title cards appearing onscreen to introduce each character, the editing – all seemed reminiscent of Trainspotting.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it was certanly noticeable and something that kept going through the back of my mind as I watched.  Regardless, it was an entertaining, watchable film.

Baltimore – From that little surrealist title comes the mental image, as if Magritte painted the following picture…

Well, advertising and ratings excluded. I feel a little sorry for Brit Marling, but there’s no helping it. As soon as I decided on these two topics I couldn’t resist the urge, and so took full artistic license since no one gives a blue crab about my rantings anyway. Let’s start with the movie. Another Earth is the love child of an odd pairing between an imaginative sci-fi circumstance and the makings of a great tragedy. But it becomes neither a serious science fiction that addresses our morality facing the improbable, nor a tear-jerker that laments the frailty of our being. But it is, oddly, not a wasted, art house film at all. Putting aside the disregard to gravitational forces that would have left the apple permanently buoyant in Son of man, Another Earth explores how we can be unsettled by the simplest things, even (or in this case, especially) ourselves.

The story starts directly. Rhoda (Marling’s character) is a reckless prodigy in astrophysics who was to attend a prestigious university at the age of 17. On the way home one night, she took her eyes off the road and toward the stars, looking for another Earth that is said to have come within viewing distance and closing in fast. When all of the physics (people flying, glass shattering, metals deforming, etc) was finished, she had killed everyone else in college professor John Burroughs’ (played by William Mapother) car: his young son and his pregnant wife. 4 years on, as the other Earth moves into our Earth’s orbit (you can imagine what havoc that will cause without a PhD in astrophysics…), a totally broken Rhoda is released from prison. Still ashamed of what she did, she took a janitorial job at a local high school – washing away her sins, as it were. This becomes more literal when she found out where John Burroughs lives. Determined to mend whatever pieces of his life that were left, she started to clean his house, too. And predictably, Rhoda falls in love with John as he is slowly rehabilitated. But this is where Another Earth diverges from other drama. What would normally lead to a boring ending of betrayal or revenge, is given a fresh option via the mirrored Earth. Is the grass really greener on the other side? Instead of backtracking in time, Another Earth tempts us with the answer that “yes, there might be another you who has been doing everything differently”, and then post the question: “are you happier knowing that, somewhere out there, your mistakes never happened”? It’s all very self-revolving, but the film never shoves philosophical questions down your throat. As this film would have you know (at least I think it did) – you did that to yourself. We are meant to guess at the meaning of the ending, and we are also meant to dwell on what we would do in her place. I thought Marling and Mapother both did a good job of portraying insipid characters who slowly recover their former selves. There are few antics, and the camera somehow translates that depression well – perhaps by mimicking the sight-lines of a drunkard? It sure looks like a hand-held video journal at times. Overall, I find Another Earth to be an enjoyable film. Sure, there are scientific problems that should have been sidestepped, and the mirrored Earth scenario seems unrelated, if not contrived, at times. But like any thought experiment, it is non-the-less useful if you arrive at a solid conclusion.

Speaking of shoving things down throats – let’s do an unboxing for blue crabs. This is how I was taught to unbox crabs this past Friday.

While(still hungry){
1. Take a butter knife (plastic will do). Pick open the wish-bone looking thing on the underside of a male crab.
2. Use 1. as a leverage or opening to pry the crab apart. The top of the crab should be open, exposing yellow goo, twisty intestines and other stuff.
3. If Asian, eat the yellow goo plus innards. If not, discard.
4. If lucky enough, the meat in the body would be in chunks with the legs still connected. Discard the legs but save the claws by twisting. Also pry the body in two.
5. If Asian, sink your face into the crab and spit out the tougher cartilage. If not, carefully pick out meat for consumption.
6. If Asian or barbaric, use your premolars to crack the claws. If not, use the wooden mallet to shatter them. Extract juicy meat.
7. Pick next victim.
}

Captain Chris’ Crab Shack is nearly off in the boondocks in Northeast Maryland, in a town creatively named North East. On a patch of land that would normally support a bungalow, there stand a dozen beach umbrellas and benches. And it is also full of sand, likely shipped in from Turkey Point, where there is a registered historic light house. From experiences so far, good food equals shacks. While there aren’t snow crabs, $15 all-you-can-eat blue crabs and corn is quite honestly a federal offense. On this first try, I demolished 20 crabs. Mmmmmm. And with old-bay spice. While they seem rather sedentary, the dead crab can seriously make cuts and scrapes in your fingers as you work through the carapaces… which is why I now have a salt-marinated thumb. Couple the feast with the blazing sun and $2 beer, we have an instant winner for low-brow food. Would I go back? Sure. If I have a car. Would I recommend it? Certainly, if your food must come with an expedition to rural America.

Baltimore – I’m going to start a new series. Switching gear is something that engineers do as often as teenagers employ the word “like”. And until I find an easy way to visit DC more often, these Be-more monthly will have to suffice.

First up, a documentary named after Juan “Doc” Restrepo, who died in Afghanistan on July 22nd 2007, beside a quaint village hut in Korangal Valley. That, is a fairly emotional description, and a good note on which to start a documentary. Yet the film, build from interviews with shell-shocked soldiers and embedded TV camera footage, manages to be slightly monotonic. I’m still baffled as to how the filmmakers managed this feat, and have not quite come to a conclusion whether this is a good presentation style. It follows a basic recipe, composed of camera footage from the front-line operation OP-Restrepo, narrated by the men who built and held that position in daily contact with the Taliban. It starts out with the new recruits landing at a dead-locked operations base in the valley. Once these greenhorn soldiers got to understand the landscape and human conflicts, they chose to make some radical changes. You see, the villagers ARE the Taliban – or rather, they are related. The scenario is similar to being antagonistic toward democrat sons/daughters/cousins in Texas – you may not agree with them, but blood is still thicker than water. Not the least because relationships with Americans are often built on a monetary basis. “We will help you build roads, give you food/supplies, make you rich men”; these were things the village elders were promised. Town-meetings and negotiations often end in stalemates, and it’s often difficult to obtain results by being civil. Shortly after Retrepo died, the men snapped, and mounted a successful assault on one of the mountain tops held by the Taliban. They didn’t just drive the enemies away, either – they started to build a fort right in front of the enemies’ eyes. That base still stands, and until the US officially withdrew from Afghanistan in 2010, it was the furthest outpost ever established in the war.

Strung together by exotic cinematography of the Korangal valley, it makes for an often nose-souring story. Listening to a Hawaiian soldier sing about palm trees and the sea while sharing the mountain air with goats pulled me straight down the checklist toward depression. The improvised coping mechanisms obscuring what must have been the most disruptive events in these soldiers lives were very raw and difficult to sit through. When the footage of the full-scale assault (one that went terribly wrong for the Americans) comes on screen, you would need to have Asperger’s to remain detached and objective. The shocking revelation wasn’t that soldiers weep and cry and can be terrified when faced with losses and deaths – contemporary cinema has repeatedly pounded that idea into us. The value lies in a contemporary confirmation – the exposure to WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq did not make us into a generation of zombies. But the finer gradation is where my annoyance with this film lies. I find the “characters” very shallow. The soldiers seem to have single-track minds regarding their objectives, while the villagers appear shrewd, greedy, and uncooperative. It may be a good way to derive a feeling of futility, but it missed the chance to exploit the media, and ask how “else” that war could have been fought. That would have been especially valuable from the front-lines. Maybe my gripes are only reflecting how much I hate the ugliness brought out by war. I intended to compare this film with another documentary Human Terrain for a more careful critique of the whole approach (for fun, not to break any new ground). However, after Gasland and Restrepo, I need a light at the end of the tunnel. Your mental integrity does not scale with mine, so you shouldn’t hesitate to see Restrepo. Expect gritty realism and military intelligence, not a mind-boggling, well-researched expose of the War in Afghanistan.

Restrepo:

Paul had reviewed Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez’s duo of homemade amps and guitars back in September 2010. That tells you how much I’m always behind. Buke and Gass has since put out a full-length album, Riposte. (I don’t know how scissors and fencing go together but then again it reflects well in the music). I was surprised how easily I got into the “beautiful noise” that they make. For anyone who has heard Shiina Ringo (a Japanese singer/songwriter), Arone Dyer’s voice will sound very familiar. In fact I went immediately to google Ringo when I first heard it on NPR. For a glimpse of those crazy guitars/bass, you can watch a Tiny Desk concert here. My favorites are Outt! and Sleep Gets Your Ghost. Another good one is Your Face Left Before You (below). I admit it’s not an everyday type of album – I’d listen to this if I parkour, while I parkour.

Buke & Gass : Your Face Left Before You by shalalabonbons

Buke & Gass:

Toronto – Ahhhhhhh, October. For most Americans, this means one thing – baseball playoffs. So it is with perfect timing that Jews & Baseball: An American Love Story was released this past weekend as well. Directed by Peter Miler, the 90 minute documentary tell us about baseball history (more specifically Jewish players in baseball) and tries to marry it with the tale of Jewish struggle in America.

The documentary, narrated by Dustin Hoffman, starts off in the 1800s. At this time, Jews were still relative outsiders in the United States and were discriminated against. The sport of baseball seemingly allowed the Jews to take their minds off this fact and allowed them to feel American. Most of the documentary is taken from the Jewish/outsider perspective and the acceptance of Jewish ballplayers in baseball is used as a larger metaphor for acceptance of Jewish people into American society.

For me, the most fascinating aspect of the documentary was when they featured players that I knew, more specifically Sandy Koufax and Shawn Green. Koufax is usually regarded as the best pitcher ever and Shawn Green was a Blue Jay, so I was particularly interested in hearing their side of the story. Detailed accounts of Koufax is told, with big names such as Larry King (alive since the 1700s, no doubt), Ron Howard and Fred Wilpon (Mets owner) giving their accounts of Koufax. While they do go on about how Koufax was instrumental to the Jewish community for his achievements in baseball, it doesn’t really pinpoint what exactly he did that was so instrumental, unless it was just a collective ego boost. I think his part in helping start the union was more fascinating then him being Jewish, but maybe that’s just me.

From a documentary perspective – the archival footage is great and the personal assembled for the documentary was impressive. The soundtrack was annoying. I get it, it’s baseball. There is no need to play “take me out to the ball game” or old time vaudeville music multiple times during the film. Once the documentary moved into more modern times and I started recognizing the players and people that were talked about, the documentary became much more enjoyable.

Jews and Baseball is a fairly interesting historical tale of the integration of Jewish people into the Major Leagues. It doesn’t dig deep into the Jewish psyche or explain much about what makes a Jewish baseball player Jewish, other then the fact that he’s Jewish. Does that make sense? I guess sometimes the “He’s a Jew, he’s doing well in baseball. He is being embraced by the general public therefore I feel like I am now accepted as part of the general public” idea seems kind of odd to me. I am not so sure that non fans of baseball will find the 90 minute film engaging, but fans of the game/Jewish people will probably enjoy the documentary as it tells a nice history of the game and a brief glimpse of the Jewish culture in America.

Jews in Baseball is currently playing at Cineplex Odeon Sheppard – 4861 Yonge St.