DVD review: The Prisoner (2009)

I've just begun the 2009 AMC remake of The Prisoner, starring Jim Caviezel and Sir Ian McKellan. It condenses the action of the series into six episodes, and significantly changes aspects of the story - changes which appear to have lost many loyalists of the original show, but to me, so far - a third of the way in - have me wholly engaged and curious. Whereas in the original series, the inhabitants of The Village realize they are in a village, separated from the rest of the world, with which they retain a relationship, in the remake, everyone seems to labour under an enforced, unquestionable consensus that the Village is the only such place in the world, and has always been thus. There is no London, no New York, no ocean, even, just the Village and the desert beyond it; thinking about the village in any other way is seen as a threat to stability, a sure way to mark oneself a lunatic, and all media and government efforts in the Village encourage acceptance of the consensus and ones lot in life. Everyone is happy in the Village; why would anyone want to imagine life any differently?

(Already that description is reminding me of growing up in Maple Ridge...)

Enter number 6, who wakes up on the Village outskirts one day, not understanding where he is or what's happened to him. His refusal to accept that the Village is all that there is - his insistence on a before and an elsewhere - quickly become a metaphor for any individual at odds with his society, unwilling to accept its limitations and customs, or, indeed, even its reality. His continued refusal of the consensus marks him as insane - but becomes a point of pride (all of which is a bit richer and more complex than that rather dated, oh-so-'60's proclamation that "I am not a number - I am a free man!"). The vividness of 6's insistence on another world threatens to unbalance the status quo, since gradually, Number 6 draws other people into his "delusion," drawing on their own half-forgotten dreams and memories of other ways of being; but just as they are partially seduced by him, so too 6 is partially seduced by the collective hallucination that he himself has always been a resident of the the Village, with family, a job, coworkers and so forth, who are all worried about his sudden insistence that nothing around him is real. Maybe everyone else is right, and he really is insane? After all, so much around him is eerily familiar...

It's a very curious show! Its metaphors are a bit more streamlined and its narrative quite a bit more coherent and consistent than the original series, which, while brilliant, was highly uneven and, er, at times a bit ramshackle. The 2009 remake seems determined to improve on the original, and - while it can never match the original for cultural/ historical significance, and labours in great debt to it - appears (based on the first two episodes), to succeed quite admirably. Sir Ian McKellan, further, is delightful to watch, as always, as the totalitarian in charge, Number Two, who appears just as convinced as everyone about the reality of The Village, and genuinely confused by 6's contrary assertions; he only wants to help the poor man come to grips with reality - just like so many other fascists before him...

I reserve the right to do an about-face on the series if the next few episodes lose me - but so far, I think I'm recommending this'un!

A kind of irony...

Weird: I reviewed two albums for the Straight this week. One I personally have almost no interest in, though I had to concede it was very well done; I didn't really let on when writing about Polly's debut that I was one of the "why" people that I mentioned, but I was actually covertly expressing my own opinion there: I own not a single album by Bowie, Mott, Slade, T. Rex, or almost any other glam bands, with the noted exception of Eno-period Roxy Music (and Eno solo albums) and a couple of Alice Coopers. Glam - even supposedly good glam - generally strikes me as shallow, image-conscious music, for the most part, and kind of boring; I simply do not care whose main man Telegram Sam might be, and never have.

Still, I couldn't let my own antipathy towards glam - I even thought Velvet Goldmine was a bit of a yawn - taint my review. The Polly CD is a pretty damn good CD, if you like that sort of thing; I simply don't.

On the other hand, I'm on a big Funerary Call kick this month, and not only respected, but totally enjoyed Fragments From The Aethyr, which I have continued to listen to since writing the review.

Funny, then, despite my feelings, to see that the Polly review is at present on top of the heap of Straight CD reviews this week, with 46 likes on Facebook. Reviews written by other writers span the gamut between 2 and 35 likes each.

Funerary Call is at the bottom, with zero likes. Only one other band has attracted so little attention.

Ah, well! I guess people will like what they like. (Fans of Funerary Call and Sistrenatus would actually be doing the band a favour by sharing the review, however; such things directly increase the likelihood of bigger & better articles bein' written...).

Record Store Day 2013 - a peek

Not the official list, yet, but here's a peek online to what Record Store Day 2013 holds in store.

I am trying to be very prudent with my vinyl buying, so am quite pleased that there is exactly one item that I consider a must have! (A mere 7", the artist/ title of which I will refrain from mentioning lest I stir up competition for it). Like last year, there's a bunch of stuff I can do without.

Here are some considerations for future Record Store Day releases: vinyl reissues that would force me to spend some dough!

Townes Van Zandt: High, Low and In-Between and The Late, Great Townes Van Zandt (why are these not available in vinyl? They're better than 80% of the Townes that has been reissued).

Gary Floyd solo LPs on vinyl, and/or vinyl reissues of Sister Double Happiness LPs (Gary did a bunch of great blues and country albums for European labels in the 1990's, which were only ever put out on CD, most of which has never been heard in North America! Almost all the Sister Double Happiness catalogue is scandalously out-of-print, too).

The Meat Puppets: Huevos, Too High To Die: two great later 'Pups offerings, hard to come by on vinyl now

The Flesheaters: A Minute to Pray A Second To Die, the Tooth and Nail comp, and/or their first single

The Plugz: anything and everything!

Mike Watt and the Black Gang: Contemplating the Engine Room vinyl (Nels Cline is awesome on this)

High Rise, Fushitsusha: (any vinyl reissues of their PSFD LPs) - great Japanese psych; High Rise bring the blues-based rock, while Fushitsusha gets much noiser. Some brilliant, heavy-as-hell stuff from both, though

Raymond Pettibon and Super Session: Torches and Standards: a delightful, limited edition picture disc of yore with really fun songs from Pettibon

Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Broken Arrow (if not egregiously overpriced!).

Gerry Hannah: Songs from Underground vinyl edition! Only ever available as a highly limited cassette!

Peter Laughner: Take the Guitar Player for a Ride (featuring Laughner doing his own versions of Rocket From the Tombs and Pere Ubu songs)

Tad: vinyl reissues of Infra Red Riding Hood and Inhaler

The Stalk-Forrest Group: St. Cecila vinyl - early incarnation of the Blue Oyster Cult!

Nina Simone: Pastel Blues... oop, wait, there's a 180 gram reissue of that. Shit! It's got her doing "Sinnerman," which I think I kinda need on vinyl, maybe - though it's kind of ironic that whenever I hear it, the main sin it brings to mind is spending too much money on music and movies and other non-essential items.

Anyhow...

RIP Stompin' Tom Connors: an ESL Lesson

In respect of the passing, at age 77, of Stompin' Tom Connors, I want to share a lesson plan I cooked up for use in intermediate ESL classrooms, using one of his songs, "Roving All Over The Land." Ideally anyone who uses it should get their school to pay some money to the Connors estate! (You don't need to pay me anything; consider my part in this a freebie).  It covers several bases - from introducing some Canadian culture to the classroom to practising listening, reading, decoding, and discussion skills.

The first part is pretty basic. You prep the class to listen for the missing words in the song by getting them to repeat them after you. Then you play the song twice and have them fill in the blanks; then go through and check their answers. It gets more interesting in part two! (The whole exercise can take upwards of 40 minutes). 

Stompin’ Tom Connors: “Roving All Over the Land”

From the __________of Vancouver

To the Isle of Newfoundland

There’s daisies by the wayside

And the pasture’s ________ again

The bluejay on the ________

Has _________ in his song

While out on the open ________

I _________ my way along

Roving all over the land…

THUMB    FENCEPOST      ISLAND     
GREEN     SUMMER      HIGHWAY

With a knapsack on my ___________

And a flattop by my side

I ___________ the great north _____________

And I feel so ________ inside

There stops an old haywagon

I climb up on the load

Where I munch on a big red apple

As we jog __________ the road

Roving all over the land…


COUNTRY        ALONG          ROAM           
SHOULDER            FREE

You’ll find me by the _________

Where the lively otter plays

Or ________ beside the _________

Where the lazy cattle graze

You’ll find me in the __________

Of a _______ that moves along

To the music of my flattop

On an old ____________ song

Roving all over the land…

BACKSEAT      HITCHHIKER’S     RIVER     
MEADOW     ASLEEP    CAR

Here comes an old ________ driver

I know by the way he _________

I’ll sing and ________ my flattop

For the next two hundred ________

And a little voice will tell me

I’ve made another friend

I’ll share his _________ sandwich and I’m on the _________ again

Roving all over the land…

TRUCK        PICK           ROAD          
SMILES          MILES         BACON

***

The second part of the lesson is where it gets interesting. You assign the students to work in groups. ESL students are terrifically over-dependent on their dictionaries, which they generally don't use very skillfully, grabbing at words and definitions irrespective of context, conjugations, and so forth, and often coming up with the wrong one. One point of the following lesson is to teach them that they can actually figure out word meanings without dictionaries, by careful reading, paying attention to contextual clues, and doing some creative thinking.

To illustrate, you can ask them what an "otter" might be, calling their attention to the word in the song. We know from the third verse that the otter is by a river; that it is lively; and that it plays. Ask the class what sorts of things PLAY. You'll get various answers - musicians, radios, children, animals, and so forth. You can help them think through the likelihood of any one possibility being right as they come up, asking them if other clues in the song support the guesses; but put them all on the board. To show them how they might want to think about the task, you can call attention to the parallel structure in the song between the otter playing and the cattle grazing; you might want to check in to see if anyone knows what cattle are, and if not, you can tip a hint that cattle are cows. Eventually, more creative/ gifted students in the class would generally figure out that otters are animals of some sort; that they probably aren't radios, that children and musicians don't really fit the context. It is unlikely that they will get any further than figuring that otters are animals, but it still should be enough to make them aware that they can probably DO the following exercise if they try. Prizes can definitely help motivate them!

Once you've set up the activity, here's part two:

DO NOT USE YOUR DICTIONARIES:

From reading the lyrics to the song, what do you think the following words mean:

1. roving 
2. bluejay
3. fencepost
4. knapsack
5. munch
6. flattop
7. haywagon
8. meadow
9. backseat
10. hitchhiker

Finally: what does it mean to “thumb your way along?”

***

Motivated by a prize or such, students SHOULD be able to come up with guesses; you can go around and offer suggestions, as needed. Assigning it as a group task gets them to discuss their guesses with each other (in English!) and can help build confidence in communicating, even if they get the answers wrong. It may help if you read back through the song with the students to call attention to the context; "flattop" is a particularly interesting word, in that it has a meaning unfamiliar even to most English speakers, but can be easily decoded by looking at the three instances in the song, and being attentive to related words. 

Afterwards, depending on the class, there's all sorts of room for discussion on topics like travel, hitchhiking, the singer's attitude toward Canada and the Canadian landscape, and how the song might have been different  if it had been written in the student's home country, the students' own experiences of the Canadian landscape, and, indeed, popular folk songs. You could even assign them to write their own version of the song, using cultural clues from their own country...!

Depending on the presence or absence of Muslims in the class, the "bacon sandwich" can also be exploited productively; I personally used to love bacon and ketchup on toast. Earlier in my childhood, I would get my Dad to cut off the crusts, and make me a chocolate milkshake to go with it. A favourite snack of my youth...

My respects to Stompin' Tom Connors, for his many wonderful songs. He joins the list of folk musicians I have always wanted to see, but never seized the opportunity, and his passing thus increases the likelihood that I might show up the next time John Prine, Loudon Wainwright, or Kris Kristofferson comes through town...

The lesbians of 1957: Crime of Passion

Had a delightful shock watching a 1957 film noir, written by esteemed noir author Jo Eisinger (a man). The film, Crime of Passion, stars Barbara Stanwyck as an ambitious career journalist who, despite fearing that marriage will be a prison for her, falls in love and marries a rather laid-back cop (Sterling Hayden). After the honeymoon wears off, she finds herself stifled, bored, and unable to identify with the nattering cop wives she's expected to trade recipes with; nor is she welcome among the boys. As an oultet for her ambitions, she begins to scheme on ways to advance her husband's career; these begin more-or-less innocently, but grow increasingly nefarious, until eventually she ends up as a sort of femme fatale. Still, the film never loses sympathy with her, and has been taken, according to Jo Eisinger's Wikipedia page, as being "a strikingly modern commentary about how women were driven mad by the limitations imposed upon them in the postwar period." Seems a reasonable reading! 

Early in the film, before Stanwyck gives up her newspaper column, there's a scene where she writes a heart-to-heart, woman-to-woman letter to a female murderess on the loose (this is the case where she meets her future hubby). The film shows various female newspaper readers reading it aloud, including a couple of women who appear dressed for bed - which hints at the possibility of a lesbian relationship - but then gives us an unambiguous shot of two San Francisco female cab drivers on a break. I somehow suspect even in 1957 it wouldn't have been too hard for audience members to peg their sexual orientation:

Sadly, I'm not the first person to comment on this scene! A highly startling moment for a film from so long ago. A pretty good movie, too, though it's probably better to come to it as I did, knowing nothing about it (I saw it on the shelf, though, "Stanwyck and Hayden? Cool!" and read not a word on it until afterwards) than with raised expectations. Thanks to the Genetic Method blog for posting the screengrab that I stole... 

Note: the lobby card above makes it seem like Stanwyck shoots her husband, but rest assured, for those of you who get pissed off by spoilers, that it's a completely deceptive ad!

RIP Alvin Lee

Man. Alvin Lee died! I don't own a single Ten Years After album, nor did I even know he was still alive, but his guitar at that Woodstock performance made an indelible impression on me as a young man...

Weird dreams of the Bad Brains

Oh, man. This is kind of an embarrassing dream to relate.

I was at some sort of work function - a party or such. The Bad Brains were playing. No one knew who they were except me.  I had some other duty that kept me from fully appreciating the concert - I was bouncing back and forth between something I was supposed to do and checking out the band - but I was still enjoying myself, getting to dance to "How Low Can A Punk Get" and other classics.

At one point I came back to the stage area and discovered all the other audience members - my coworkers - had left. Then I saw they were huddled in a corner, because they'd cut open a watermelon and were all enjoying it.

I rushed over and grabbed slices and brought them to the band, while they were performing. One slice for each member, setting them on the stage.

Then I got worried that they might get the wrong idea. But they ate the watermelon, and I felt relieved.

After the show, I was gushing to the band, sitting next to them on a long bench. I never thought I'd get to see you guys live - could I interview you? HR - who seemed much younger than he actually is, and quite self-possessed - gave me his phone number; I had some difficulty copying it down. He doesn't seem at all crazy, I thought; then I had a moment of panic: I would have to ask him about his homophobic meltdown with Gary Floyd, Biscuit, and Dave Dictor, back in Austin! Maybe he would get upset! Hell, he would probably be angry to know that I interviewed Gary (see below for link). Maybe he would think I was a "bloodclot faggot," too! He was sitting right next to me on a bench, and I glanced at him and felt fear.

Afterwards, I went to the washroom and saw myself in the mirror. I was wearing some sort of weirdly-fitting top, mostly pink and white, that exposed one of my nipples, and giant shorts that were done up to look like the face of a monster, with eyes and a big grin across the front. They looked a bit like the face of the Ultraman monster I keep in my kitchen, TwinTail (photo from the actual TV series here - best look at his face, though my toy and my dream-shorts have a toothy grin). I stood there, adjusting my t-shirt, trying to see if I could make my outfit fit in such a way that I looked less gay.

I simply couldn't. I think I might have had feathered, highlighted hair, too. (I was also younger in the dream, such that I had hair to feather).

I completely forgot about this dream upon waking, but came to the computer to find an email from Chris Walter where he used the letters HD (we were discussing a point about Harleys) and they reminded me of HR, so suddenly it all sprang back to mind.

Unfortunately, there is no Vancouver date on the Bad Brains current tour, though they will be playing Toronto soon.

"The criminal is dead!": adventures on a Vancouver bus

Yesterday, waiting outside Videomatica/ Zulu for a bus to get me to the West Coast Express, I noticed, some blocks away, across 4th Ave, a hostile, raging drunk shouting at the top of his lungs and angrily gesticulating, beer can in hand, as he walked. I couldn't quite make out what he was saying, but as he got closer, it became apparent that a key theme of his rant was "the criminal is dead!"

No doubt some of my fellow bus-stop-waiters felt the same trepidation as I did when they saw that he was crossing the street to join us. Sitting at the centre of the bench, he continued his raging, obscenity-rich, intermediate-ESL rant, and everyone moved a little further away from him. "He's a criminal! He focking deserve it! Focking media love him but he a focking CRIMINAL! I know da troot! They suck my dick! The criminal is DEAD!"

Eventually curiosity got the better of me and I walked over. "Hey buddy - who's the criminal?" But I had a pretty good guess ready. Stubby and dark-complected, the guy had a definitely South American look to him, and I'd read the day before that Hugo Chavez was in delicate condition; I hadn't caught the headlines that morning, but it seemed a pretty good guess. I know that many Venezuelans dislike Chavez, regarding him as a corrupt dictator, despite his success at wooing leftists and media-types in the west; certainly all my Venezuelan students, when I taught ESL, were pretty much unanimous on the topic of Chavez.

After buddy confirmed that indeed he WAS indeed talking about Hugo Chavez, I checked one more thing with him. "You're Venezuelan, right?"

Like I needed to ask.

He actually seemed a bit calmer after our exchange. I tried to validate his feelings a little - "I know - the media DO love Chavez up here, but I know a lot of Venezuelans hate him."

"He a focking criminal!"

"Well, you should be happy, then!" (This was an unsuccessful attempt to redirect his mood). "A lot of these people probably think you're crazy" - this was an unsuccessful attempt to call his attention to the reception he was getting - "but I understand" (if all else fails, validate his feelings, let him know he's being heard).

After that, a few of my fellow bus-stop-waiters came over to ask me in hushed tones what he was going on about and I explained and I think it actually helped make people a little less afraid of him, to know the context of his rage. You gotta extend people a little indulgence when it comes to being oppressed by tyrants (not that it's at all clear to me that that's what Chavez was). Then the bus arrived - of course, it was the same bus *I* was waiting for - and he calmly got on and took a seat, toning down his routine for the first few minutes.

Eventually he started up again, at first on the level of angry mutterings, then getting louder and louder as we crossed the bridge, until everyone could hear him and he was raging full-on. Standing near the front, I made sure the driver knew what was going on; fortunately, he was an affable type, who joked that we should sing the Venezuelan national anthem (if only we knew it) and told me that he saw his job as being less about driving a bus than about "compensating for bad behaviour." Just before my stop, I checked in with Mr. Venezuela again, to try to calm him down a bit, without actually telling him to do so (since no doubt saying that would just have fuelled his rage further).

Poor Venezuelan guy: not only is he now likely hungover as hell, he has to face the news: Hugo Chavez is likely still alive. Though perhaps not for much longer.

Later, on the train, I texted a few friends to say that I'd had a "chat" with a drunk angry Venezuelan on the theme of the criminal being dead. Alas, I managed to type "chant" instead. As colourful an image as that produces - myself and a small brown drunk dude chanting "the criminal is dead! the criminal is dead" - I'm simply nowhere near that passionate about Venezuelan politics, so if you received that text, be advised...

Update: okay, drunk Venezuelan, NOW you can go rage on the bus.

RIP Mark Harris! Horrible news!

Holy shit - Mark Harris has died, at 62 years old - his obituary made the Straight today. Mark was the only professor I remained in touch with after my ill-advised, costly, and pretty much totally fruitless experiment with the UBC Film Studies department; I took his course in "Partisan cinema," screening films about irregular armies, from Roma to The Battle of Algiers to more recent fare like... was it Max Manus we watched or Flame and Citron? Both came up in class; I think it was Flame and Citron we watched. He also graded my essays for a distance ed class on Ireland in cinema.  I haven't interacted with him much lately, but he came to a screening I did of Bertrand Tavernier's Death Watch last year, and I gave him a copy of the rare European cut of Tavernier's In The Electric Mist shortly thereafter, and I had full intentions of staying in touch. I liked him a lot; he was filled with enthusiasm for cinema, and lectured in the rather blustery, improvisatory, passionate manner of a sincere but studied eccentric, drawing in anecdotes from his rather vast range of linguistic and historical knowledge, teaching more by example ("this is how it is to be a true enthusiast of cinema") rather than through the didactic laying out of information. He remains the only teacher I have ever encountered in any school of any sort to use the word "cocksucker" during a lecture - and I mean this as a point in his favour (for the record, he was illustrating a point by describing a scene from Deadwood, where the word appears frequently). If all professors were like him, I'd have a higher opinion of academia. My condolences to those who knew him - Vancouver's film community is suddenly that much poorer.

Rangda in the Straight

Not my article, but it's kinda neat: my thought, when pitching Rangda (playing tomorrow night at the Rickshaw) was that the article should prolly focus on free jazz drummer Chris Corsano, and about how he's sorta making a genre-transition here. I don't think I even mentioned that angle to the Straight, so this is a great-minds-think-alike thing, not a they-stole-my-idea one, but Alex Varty has written pretty much exactly what I would have written had it been me. Wish I could do this show tomorrow night, but various factors make it impossible... someone go in my place....

Tetsuo The Iron Man, as hosted by the Soska Sisters!

Shinya Tsukamoto's famed Japanese cyberpunk/ industrial body horror film Tetsuo: The Iron Man will screen at the Rio Theatre, hosted by Jen and Sylvia Soska, on Friday, March 8th, at 11pm. Check out the trailer - even IT is deranged! A must-see film for anyone who cares about Japanese independent filmmaking; Tom Mes devoted an entire book to Tsukamoto's early cinema, and as an actor, you've seen him in Ichi The Killer, Marebito, and many other J-horror classics... The best is still the first...!

Rangda to the Rickshaw!

Check this out - it's slow, delicate, restrained, and yet deeply stoned: Rangda's "Silver Nile," off their 2012 album Formerly Extinct. The band features guitarist Sir Richard Bishop, formerly of the unclassifiable Sun City Girls; Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance; and free jazz drummer Chris Corsano - who has done some blistering stuff, with Paul Flaherty, say, though my favourite of his recordings thus far is Immolation/ Immersion, featuring Wally Shoup and Nels Cline (not, alas, on Youtube). Chasny previously worked with Corsano on School of the Flower, an album I do not know but like what I've heard of. By the way, Rangda, Wikipedia tells me, is the name of the "demon queen of the Leyaks of Bali." Another cool show that I will miss... here's hoping that others are freer than I...

DOA RIP (?); plus the political future of Joe Keithley

Joe Keithley by bev.davies, taken at the January 18th DOA "Vancouver farewell," not to be re-used without permission

Barring reunions or one-offs, tonight - at Wild Bill’s in Banff - will see the last of the last of DOA shows, the very final gig of their farewell tour. When I spoke to DOA leader Joe Keithley at his home in Burnaby earlier this year, there was already the sense that this final tour was a bit of a formality - that Keithley was thinking past the tour, counting down the gigs in anticipation of what he hopes will be a successful bid to win the NDP Nomination to run as MLA for Coquitlam - Burke Mountain. Though my Straight feature focused on the band, much of our conversation, in fact, focused on politics, and his preparations to win the nomination.

“I knocked on doors for two and a half months, and I talked to a lot of people, and I listened to a lot of people too,” Keithley explained to me, sitting at his kitchen table -- a nice big solid piece of wood with big weird gouges in it, and arguably the most “punk rock” piece of furniture on display. “One of the things that I found is that a lot of people either had not participated in democracy, or had stopped. A lot of people under 30 went, ‘I never voted before.’ And a lot of middle-aged people went, ‘I stopped voting 20 years ago - I don’t trust any of you guys.’ Generally I signed up about 60% of those people. I said, ‘Look, I’m not coming from a political background. I’m a guy with my band, and we’ve tried to stick up for regular people our entire career. And the big thing here is - democracy is not just going to the ballot box every four years. If there’s an issue, if there’s something you believe should be corrected, you should take that issue to your Mayors, your MLA’s, your ministers.”

Keithley tapped demonstratively on the table with his hand. “Because people power trumps everything else, right? People always think that change comes from government or big business or big media, but it really comes from a grassroots level. If you’ve got a problem or you’ve got a good idea, you start in your neighbourhood with your friends and relatives and the people on your block, and maybe it spreads from there, to your city, your region, your province. Maybe across Canada, maybe across the world, if it’s a good enough idea. So rather than the tail wagging the dog, the dog can wag the tail, if the people have their say.”

The issue that rose to the top during Joe’s door-knocking was education. “The number one thing where everybody liked what I was talking about was education. Everybody from 20 to 80 got it right away, because they either had kids in school, or they were taking post-secondary school, or they had grandkids. And they were like, ‘my kids can’t get a break here.’ One of the party points that I’m really behind is $100 million dollars a year in grants for helping people with their tuitions, or at least part of it, for people in need. If you’re parents are making half a million dollars a year, you’re not going to qualify, but if you’re coming from Prince George or somewhere like that, with working class parents, it’s really hard to get down here to go to UBC, or SFU, or wherever, right? Those people need help.”

Another issue for him is the need “to get more people involved in trades and skills training. This has really been emphasized by this mine that required the workers to have command of Mandarin. This is stupid,” Keithley observed. “Obviously we need to be training people here in BC to do these jobs; it just makes sense. Because - here’s the bottom line here - an educated population is a wealthy population. And at the same time, we’re going to create jobs that pay more than $10.25 an hour. Which is the big thing - because a young person, living by themselves, they can’t survive on $10.25 an hour, and a young person with kids - it’s not even close, it’s a joke, right? With more education, we’re going to be creating more wealth, and we’re going to be creating more wealth, and we’re going to get better jobs for people, that pay more, so people can actually make a living and get by.”

This situation applies equally to the many immigrants living in Keithley's riding, who shared their troubles with him during his door-knocking. “There are a lot of Asian people, a lot of Iranian people in my riding that are really highly skilled that are working at McJobs,” he observes. “It doesn’t make any sense! You got a doctor driving a cab, you got a civil engineer working at Tim Horton’s. We need these people to help build Canada, and we’re not giving them a chance. So it’s a matter of the provincial government working out a deal with the various professional associations. And this all goes hand-in-hand. It’s just going to bring up the entire society, to a higher level of education and wealth, whether it’s immigrants, everybody. The country, except for First Nations people, they all come from somewhere else - whether it’s China or Ireland, they’ve all adapted and made the country grow, that’s the Canadian way, right? But there’s all sorts of barriers in the way of that.”

At one point, I asked Joe who would be the target of the DOA classic “Fucked Up Baby,” the last word of which has seen a variety of replacements; the last time I saw DOA play, it was “Fucked Up Harper,” though the most famous variant was undoubtedly “Fucked Up Ronnie,” about Ronald Reagan. Keithley told me then - as people who attended any of the farewell shows already know - that the band was going to go back to Ronald Reagan, for old time’s sake (as he said onstage, “you may be dead, but you’re still fucked up.”)

That’s not to say that Keithley is particularly fond of Stephen Harper, however. ”You know what, the guy is verging on being a tyrant, I think,” Keithley offered. “He’s not a fair-minded guy. Anybody who comes up with a different point of view, he’s ready to put down; there’s been a lot of stuff like, scientists that worked for the fisheries department or environmental agencies within Canada, if they’ve been dissenting, they’ve been given a rough ride. It’s criminal, I think. It’s like - “oh, you disagree with us? You can’t work here!” And the omnibus bills - the one that took away all the environmental protection in Canada, that was a travesty.”

Keithley had spent the morning of our interview talking with The Province’s Stuart Derdeyn, before picking me up; yet he showed no sign of being tired or out-of-focus during our conversation. At one point I commented on his stamina - “you really do have the oratory skills for a career in politics!”

It was really an offhand remark, but Keithley seized the opportunity no less: “I like to talk, and I like to talk about issues,” he replied. “I’ve been doing that in DOA all my life.”

If I lived in Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, I'd be happy to vote Joe Keithley into office. Best of luck to him at the NDP nomination meeting March 3rd!

Joe Keithley by bev.davies, taken at the January 18th DOA "Vancouver farewell," not to be re-used without permission

Misc. news: John Dies At The End to return to the Rio...? Plus Bison BC, Kurt Cobain, and Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut

Apparently Steve Newton of the Straight has tweeted that John Dies At The End will return to the Rio Theatre on March 28th, in a double bill with Bubba Ho-Tep! I can find no confirmation of this but am presuming it is so and am thus going to get all excited, starting real soon. This screening I shall not miss.

Meantime, Bison BC were dropped by Metal Blade, which I read about on Facebook, told a couple people about, and which subsequently found its way onto the Straight blog (I make no claim to being a "resident" at the Straight, for the record; I'm a squatter at best). I liked Lovelessness a LOT, and interviewed them about it here... I am not entirely surprised, given some of the things that got said during the interview (but which were not represented in print), to hear that the label dropped them, but it's still disappointing news; they're a great band.

Also Straightwise, I think Billy Corgan's furniture commercial is kind of cute, but I definitely can see Mike Usinger's point about it (and about Kurt Cobain) here (you can also see the commercial at that link).

Finally, there has been a rumour started on Facebook that there will be a DVD/ Blu-Ray release of Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut in October. To my knowledge it has not been confirmed. I'm also excited/ hopeful about this but a bit skeptical...

That's all for now...

Gary Floyd/ The Dicks: interview online!

Given our two hour conversation, this is only the tip of the iceberg - the bottom of which so far has yet to be published in English! - but here's my new Gary Floyd interview for Xtra West, to be printed in their next issue!

Arthouse roundup #3: Detropia and Crazy Horse

Well, plans for a piece of writing about Crazy Horse went a bit awry: it looked like I was going to be interviewing the director, esteemed documentarian Frederick Wiseman, so I held off blogging about it; then the interview fell through, and now I'm sitting at my girlfriend's trying to negotiate her Macbook while she makes breakfast and interrupts me to ask how many sausages I want (we're back on Atkins... or, well... technically, I'm back, because she never left it). In a shock, I realize that the film opened last night, unblogged and unheralded by me... oops.

So the short version: Crazy Horse is a remarkably sexy, stunningly colourful film, very unlike the relatively grim territories usually associated with Wiseman's other work (such as Near Death, Welfare, Domestic Violence I and II, Meat, and of course, Titicut Follies).  If you like the idea of watching cinema that features a lavishly lit, highly creative stage show, bepeopled with lovely women, and that further provides an insider's view of the backstage machinations involved in putting on said show, it is now playing at the Cinematheque, and highly recommended. You can see a trailer for the film (and, indeed, purchase the DVD) from Wiseman's website.

I also previewed the very engaging, moving documentary Detropia, which I was going to write about alongside my Frederick Wiseman piece, but, like, breakfast is almost ready, so can I just direct you to this great Charles Mudede review? He's a better writer than I am, anyhow...

The Cinematheque offers a Fistful of Spaghetti (arthouse roundup 2)

Some real classics are included in the Cinematheque's upcoming spaghetti westerns series, and some less-than-classics, and a couple I don't know at all. I highly recommend, in particular, as an obvious move for people brought to the form by Mr. Tarantino, Sergio Corbucci's Django, perhaps the most successful of all spaghettis after Leone's, and the one that spawned dozens (hundreds?) of non-sequels (including Tarantino's film) that use "Django" in the title. It's a strong, strong film - morbid and masochistic without being an out and out downer (like The Great Silence, another great Corbucci, not featured). While its perhaps not my favourite spaghetti (The Big Gundown and Tepepa are kinda tied for that honour, neither of which are programmed), it's certainly considered one of the touchstones of the form, and very entertaining. Franco Nero, the star, has a cameo in Django Unchained, drinking at the bar with Jamie Foxx...

The Leones need no introduction, though be prepared for a bit of a slog if you attempt Duck, You Sucker! - it's not Leone's best film by far (For a Few Dollars More gets my vote for that, actually - it's definitely one of the finest spaghettis ever made, and a must-see if you haven't caught it yet). The casting of the film - also known as A Fistful of Dynamite - is bizarre enough to hold the attention - it stars James Coburn as an Irish revolutionary, who teams up with Rod Steiger as a Mexican bandit - but you're very aware that they're actors acting, throughout. Leone's big flop, it was more-or-less lost for years, though it has now been restored; it certainly does have its admirers, and its moments.

Like many spaghettis - emerging from Europe after the tumult of the late 1960's - Duck, You Sucker! broods long and hard (and cynically) on the theme of the revolution. So does Corbucci's The Mercenary, an uneven film (also known as The Hired Gun) that probably is most noteworthy for featuring the first ever performance by Jack Palance as a character named Curly (who actually has curly hair!). You get to see him naked, too, if any of you are slathering to ogle Jack Palance's ass. I personally was not. Franco "Django" Nero stars, as does a great Actor's Studio actor, Tony Musante, who sort of steals the show, like Steiger playing a bandit-turned-revolutionary. The film bears a certain odd resemblance to Pontecorvo's Burn!, and it's no coincidence; the screenplay was worked on by Franco Solinas (who cowrote several of the Pontecorvos, including The Battle of Algiers, and worked with Costa Gavras, Joseph Losey, and Nick Ray, among others). I'm not a lover of either of these films, but there's enough in both to hold your interest, particularly if you like your spaghetti political. The Mercenary is probably the better of the two, actually...

Lee van Cleef fans further will want to see Sabata - a classic which I've never seen; and they won't want to miss the utterly great revenge thriller Death Rides a Horse. That's probably my vote for the coolest of the programming choices they Cinematheque has made. The film is one of the moodier spaghettis, opening on a torrential downpour, with lots of shots of boots trudging through mud, shortly before a family gets slaughtered. The director, Petroni, also did Tepepa, another Solinas spaghetti - a very ambitious and provocative film - but he keeps things more or less simple with Death Rides a Horse, which makes the most of a straightforward revenge narrative. It's still a nearly perfect little movie, and the one title I'd urge newbies to check out...

John Dies At The End: highly recommended

I just finished John Dies At The End. It's delightful - it's like what would happen if H.P. Lovecraft wrote comedy. I have no idea what it actually means or amounts to -- the closest thing I've read to it would be the Illuminatus! books by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, but even Illuminatus! is a little easier to peg, given the authors' tendencies to wax philosophical; Wong is more likely to slip in dick jokes. Still, it's giddy fun to read, has a definite poignancy, and is full of a variety of idiocy that only a highly intelligent person could competently craft (the author, real name Jason Pargin, is a senior editor at Cracked.com, a website that I actually peek in on on a semi-regular basis; their film lists are quite entertaining, in particular). What's strangest about it is how perfectly it suits adaptation by Don Coscarelli - there are all sorts of things in it that dovetail with the world of Phantasm, from alternate universes with a malign interest in our own, to chopped off fingers, to a character called The Large Man (though he is not played in the film adaptation by the same actor who played The Tall Man - though Angus Scrimm is in the film, as Father Shellnut, a character not in the book, that I noticed). Still no word on a Vancouver theatrical release - looks like I may be seeing this film for the first time on DVD, come April...

Japanese reggae alert: Audio Active's "Happy Shopper" on eBay!

Arguably my favourite song about consumerism - right up there with The Clash's "Lost in the Supermarket" - is Japanese dub reggae/ On-U Sound band Audio Active's "Happy Shopper," off their album Happy Happer. The 12" is on eBay right now, starting at a very low price; it's a deeply cool song, with some of the best-written English language lyrics to come out of Japan, but it's perhaps not so well known in North America for it to end up costing much. Official video for the song here - check it out! I had the privilege of seeing Audio Active live in Yoyogi Park some years ago, though I don't remember much of it. Two members of Audio Active were the seed for Dry & Heavy, an even more reggae-oriented band, whom I caught at the Fuji Rock Festival, at the gig when Heavy, the bassist, shocked the audience by announcing his departure. (It came at the end of their set, which had been terrific - everyone was pumped and joyous, then he said something into the mike and there was this huge GASP from the crowd; I turned to a friendly Japanese hipster who had been kinda surprised to see a fat white guy happily dancing in the dust to a Japanese band, and had been chatting with me, and asked him to translate the announcement, which surprised me as much as anyone).

Those Japanese can sure do reggae - check out this extended mix of Dry & Heavy's "Mr. Blueflame," with the terrific Likkle Mai on vocals...!

The most depressing story I have encountered this year

I've been too preoccupied with reading John Dies At The End (see below) to write much lately, but I thought I would share an extremely depressing story I encountered while trolling the obits this evening.  An American country singer named Mindy McCready has committed suicide by gunshot at age 37. While men - especially in America - often choose guns to make their quietus, it's a fairly uncommon way (or so I have read) for women to kill themselves; women usually choose, for whatever reason, less messy/ penetrative/ noisy/ disfiguring means of accomplishing the task. With these thoughts in mind, I zipped over to Youtube to find a sample song of hers, to see what sort of woman WOULD kill herself with a gun - and encountered - get this - the song "Guys Do It All The Time" (which is actually about her going out carousing with her female friends, but still...). Apparently her ex-boyfriend had also shot himself (unless foul play was involved, which apparently has been considered) on the same porch, one month ago; and to make this story even more depressing, apparently McCready shot the family dog before shooting herself. Her two children, who were not present, are now left parentless. Those wishing to delve deeper into the story can do so here. Let's not have any more stories like that for awhile, shall we?