Bareback Rider

Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee, director; Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, screenplay; based on a short story by Annie Proulx; (2005). . If you read the Friday movie reviews in your local newspaper, you already know that director Ang Lee’s controversial contemporary Western film, Brokeback Mountain, which opened a couple of weeks ago, is the “gay cowboy movie.” If you don’t read the reviews, “Brokeback Mountain” is the story that begins with... 
[Read more...]

Gods, Ghosts, Aliens, Angels and Elvis

There are many ways to begin thinking about what exists, or about what we call “reality.” It is even possible to doubt that anything exists, except perhaps ourselves, but we can leave that possibility for later. For now, let’s assume that some things exist in addition to ourselves. One way of thinking about reality is to start with familiar things like tables, chairs, the trees outside the window, and other people. But ordinary things don’t appear to pose much of a problem about reality, at least... 
[Read more...]

Gods, Ghosts, Aliens, Angels and Elvis (part 2)

[part 2] From Astrology to Zombies While this is not the place to take up all extraordinary beliefs, it will be useful to offer a few brief comments on some of the more popular ones, that is, beliefs held by large numbers of people. First, though, in anticipation of our conclusions, we should address a question that may now be on readers’ minds: Have any extra-ordinary popular beliefs been substantiated by evidence? The disappointing answer in practically all cases is, Not so far. There may be some exceptions,... 
[Read more...]

New York Poems

1. Tattoo When Thomas goes to the bathroom at the crowded New York Japanese restaurant on 9th St., where we’re about to have dinner on my first evening in town, the guy at the next table (the tables are tightly packed, cheek to jowl), in his late 20s, less than a foot to the left and opposite me, who is holding hands with a Japanese-American woman (do I detect something punkish about her? a streak of colour in her hair, unusual eye makeup?), immediately says to me, in French-accented English, “Eet’s... 
[Read more...]

In Neverland

My favourite Globe and Mail columnist, TV critic John Doyle, writing in the wake of last week’s acquittal of pop star Michael Jackson on charges of child molestation, decided that the major unexplored issue of the spectacle was not the meaning of the events or the soul of its eccentric protagonist(s), but Jackson’s fanatical fans. “What was missing from the extensive TV play,” declares Doyle, “was coverage and analysis of those sad, strange people who supported Jackson throughout the trial.” Asks... 
[Read more...]

Letter from Berlin: The Sound of …

I I’ve been listening to music, lately. Weird music. The other evening, for example, I was sitting in the upper ranges of architect Hans Scharoun’s mid-20th century chamber music hall, part of his Philharmonie auditorium complex, one of my favourite places in Berlin. I was listening to a piece by Giacinto Scelsi, a 20th century Italian composer (1905-1988) whom I’d never heard of, the lushly-titled Khoom — seven episodes from an unwritten story of love and death in a faraway country. Khoom is... 
[Read more...]

Biopics: I Say Epicky, You Say Opicky

Oliver Stone, Alexander (2004) Martin Scorcese, The Aviator (2004) Taylor Hackford, Ray (2004) Very occasionally, Hollywood gives its “Best Picture” Academy Award to a film with something on its mind, like Marty (1955), Annie Hall (1977), or A Beautiful Mind (2001). Mostly, though, it prefers to give the award to something epic, say, Gone With the Wind (1939) or last year’s Lord of the Rings (2003). If it can’t get something epicky, it’s willing to settle for something opicky — biographical... 
[Read more...]

The Horses of Instruction: Teaching at Capilano College

Coming from a classroom on the south, or lower side of the Capilano College campus, where I’ve just taught an 8:30 morning class, I’m heading up the hill toward the northside Fir Building. I have a cubbyhole office there on the fourth floor. On my way, I pass the music rooms at the base of the building. Pouring out of the practice cubicles, whose windows are partially open on this Indian summer September morning, is an astonishing cacophany of sound—rippling piano scales, horn blurts, the tooting of... 
[Read more...]

True Patriot, er, Fondness: some Oh Canada notes

In the Thanksgiving edition of the Toronto Star (Oct. 11, 2004), columnist Linda McQuaig writes a sort of count-our-blessings piece suitable to the season. Instead of once again ploughing the well-furrowed field of Canadian anti-Americanism, or the over-manured pasture of Canadian criticism of Canadian anti-Americanism, McQuaig turns her attention to a less-observed barnyard topic, namely, the turkey of Canadian anti-Canadianism. She notes that “one of our charms as a country is that we take criticism well.”... 
[Read more...]

Letter from Berlin: CanLit Comes to Town

BERLIN—What does it feel like to be at a literary reading in which the audience is outnumbered by the reader? Pretty weird. My long-suffering friends know to the point of upchucking that I’m a Berlinophile well beyond the ordinary call-of-Canadian-duty to be polite in a place where you’re a visitor. They will be delighted, therefore, to hear me abjectly confess that sophisticated, Kultur-drenched, sexy, hip Berlin can run just as screwed-up a literary festival as Toronto, Vancouver or Rejkjavik, Iceland. Okay,... 
[Read more...]

« Previous Page — Next Page »