Hands-off My Music CDs!

The music industry is cheating you out of your right to own CDs! Yes, you heard it here first. They’d prefer if you download it, instead of buy it and own it on good old CDs. But before I go on to expound my little faux conspiracy theory, let’s make one thing clear: I do not resist technological progress (see, I even use ‘progress’, not ‘change’ – and this was a Freudian slip – trust me). In fact, I LOVE, as most of my friends will happily attest, gadgets. Music CD however, is, for the time being, a music lover’s best friend, and don’t let the throngs of clamoring music executives tell you otherwise!

Just a Walk in Paranoid Park

I can’t think of a director ‘doing youth’ better than Gus Van Sant. He may have invented his own sub genre (the equivalent of music’s ‘Sad Core’ – Elliott Smith who happens to be on the movie’s sound track is a typical specimen). In ‘Elephant’, his movie about a massacre perpetrated by two teenagers, brought us ever so close to his subjects, allowing us to know better, if not empathize, with their motives (knowing nothing about the movie before watching it, it was exceptionally powerful for this reason as well).

Arts, Culture and the Butterfly Effect

Harper’s government announced $45-million cuts to various arts and culture programs. Kory Teneycke, Harper’s communications director said that “when we find examples of programs that are clearly not meeting their objectives, without apologies we will cancel them”.
On the face of things, this makes sense. Government spending as a whole should be scrutinized regularly. Arts and culture programs are no exception. But will funds taken from under-performing programs end up supporting ‘performing’ arts and culture programs? I somehow doubt it. One representative comment posted on the Globe and Mail’s web site bluntly expressed a populist sentiment that this government may share: “..arts aren’t my priority. Let millionaire snobs buy up crappy paintings. I want my tax dollars to go where it’s most needed…”. He may express, in less refined terms, what Harper’s government actually feels about arts spending.

Sports Photography in a Digital Age

There’s nothing like the Olympics and its flood of imagery to demonstrate the impact of state of the art photography equipment. The latest crop of high end digital SLRs used by sport photographers are in fact single purpose computers fitted with imaging chips, lenses and some mechanical parts. It is especially significant in action and therefore sport photography. Images are sharper, more color accurate, have a three dimensional quality and are extremely vivid as a result. In the hands of a competent photographer, photographs are substantially (visually, and technically) better than they were only a few years ago. Arguably, this may also have an impact on the narrative communicated through photos of this genre. It is my opinion that the introduction and recent mass adoption of digital SLRs are the single most important reason for this development. 

The Perfect Ending

Hype can spoil a perfectly good movie. It took months and one desperate Friday evening in a local video store (you just know when you’ve been in the store for way too long), to finally, reluctantly pick up a copy of No Country for Old Men. Watching it I was relieved. The Coen Brothers did not disappoint. I was especially taken with the film’s closing scene and found its ‘ambiguity’ to be the perfect ending to a very good film. 

Snowed-in Atheist

Orhan Pamuk seemed to have used every major ingredient from Turky’s recent and past history in his novel “Snow“. His protagonist, Ka, on a journey back from Germany where he self-exiled for years, is traveling through a snow storm to a small town called Kars. Yet this classic telling of self discovery turns into one of loss. A poet looking for his life’s great love, inspiration to his unbridled passion for writing poems and greater meaning for his life, Ka ends up getting it all and then promptly losing it. If it wasn’t for the thread that starts his journey, his writing about a series of suicides by young women in the town of Kars, which ultimately unravels his hope for personal happiness. 

Living on the Fringe (Pt. I)

Living in Toronto’s Cabbagetown, one of its oldest neighborhoods, also means living in two worlds. It is a focal point for a fast growing city trying to figure its past and future. I moved in about 8 months ago, after a year of looking for a place to call home. I found a thoroughly renovated spacious Victorian just minutes away from the city’s core, and a short 15 minutes drive away from my office.