The Oscar Project -- Week One

Posted by Peter Hemminger in Stranger in the Alps

For 82 years, the Academy Awards have purported to choose the year’s best film. For the next year, I’ll be watching one best picture winner per week, starting 52 years ago and working up to tonight’s winner. Some of the films are rightly regarded as classics. Others, decidedly less so. But each of them must have had some quality that earned it the top spot, and I’ll be trying to suss out what that is, and why it holds up — or why it deserves to be forgotten.

1958: Gigi (Best Picture, Best Director, and seven others)

“It’s the same dull world wherever you go / Whatever place you’re at / The Earth is round but everything on it is flat” — Gaston in “It’s a Bore”

If I had started this project when I first thought of it a year ago, the first entry would be David Lean’s Bridge … Read More

Add comment      more in Film Features     |     posted Mar 7th, 2010 at 5:43pm

Alberta Theatre Projects' playRites in brief — three plays, exactly 100 words each

Posted by Peter Hemminger in Stranger in the Alps

How Do I Love Thee?, by Florence Gibson MacDonald:
Given my near-complete lack of literary training, I only know Elizabeth Barrett Browning for her titular question, and even less of Robert Browning. Maybe an emotional connection to their poetry would’ve made How Do I Love Thee go down easier, but as it stands, the florid language seemed disconnected from a relatively flat staging. Things improve in the second act, when the play moves from literary wooing to real human conflict, and the actors do their best to instill real passion and energy in the poetry, but it’s hard to imagine there’s much here that wasn’t already on the page.

Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre, by Larry Tremblay, translated by Chantal Bilodeau:
As complex as  … Read More

Add comment      more in Theatre     |     posted Feb 19th, 2010 at 10:01am

Full streams of Quasi and Xiu Xiu

Posted by Peter Hemminger in Stranger in the Alps

It looks like the fine folks at Kill Rock Stars are in a generous mood right now. The label is celebrating its first two releases of 2010 by streaming them for free over at soundcloud.com.

So, if you want to check out the latest from hard-rocking, melodically dense Portland trio Quasi or emotionally dour weirdness from Xiu Xiu, just follow the links or click the streams below (which hopefully will work):

 

Quasi - American Gong by killrockstars

XIU XIU Dear God, I Hate Myself by killrockstars

 Read More
Add comment      more in Music Features     |     posted Feb 18th, 2010 at 2pm

Scary but true: I really liked Edge of Darkness

Posted by Peter Hemminger in Stranger in the Alps

 

If I were feeling particularly honest, I’d have to confess that I didn’t think Edge of Darkness would be any good. Director Martin Campbell did direct two of the best Bond movies in recent memory (and maybe the best one ever with Casino Royale), but the presence of Mel Gibson was a major turn-off — not because of his film presence, which I actually enjoy, but more because the assorted scandals of the last few years soured me on him. That one South Park episode didn’t help my biases, either.
The movie’s opening didn’t help much, with Gibson’s Boston accent and his powerful fatherly love providing ample targets for cynicism. But then it got me. The story started unfolding, the tone got increasingly grim, and I found myself wondering why I was … Read More

Add comment      more in Film Reviews     |     posted Jan 29th, 2010 at 9:55am

What to do with community television

Posted by Peter Hemminger in Stranger in the Alps

Public TV scrap-heap

It's been a year and a half since Fast Forward ran a cover story on the death of community television. That article mostly focussed on the local side of things, but since then, the situation has only gotten more extreme.

Now, for the first time in eight years, the CRTC is doing a review of its public television policy, and they're taking input from the public at large. The forum has been open since last October, and they'll be accepting opinions until Feb 1 — that's six more days. The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) has more information on its website, as well as a sample letter that you can send in.

I know public television conjurs images of low-budget sets and awkward hosts that lend themselves to … Read More

Comments (1)      more in Television     |     posted Jan 28th, 2010 at 3:37pm

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