The usual. Cloudy at the top of the hill before the 10 minute descent to the town. Sun breaks out as soon as one gets past Sinclair Canyon. The weather often ‘divides’ favorably on the Radium side.
The resort is great as usual, too. Lake and golf course outside the second floor suite and balcony. Saw bighorn mother and baby on the way in. Nice to be greeted by the locals. Later, saw several males butting trees with their racks to bring down apples. Mule deer here, too. Lots of wild all around.
(one of the great Canadian concerts of all time, along with the London one)
None of these will signify for any new Canadians and for most people under 40 who will be amazed by the outpouring of feelings when these Canadian greats finally pass.
Buffy Sainte-Marie, the top native performer on both sides of the border. A great songwriter and innovator who has remorphed herself via the new technology, an astounding transition. A great songwriter: “Until It’s Time for You to Go”, “Up Where We Belong”.
Gordon Lightfoot, who still fills concert halls across Canada. He wrote great Canadian songs like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “The Canadian Railroad Trilogy” as well as many memorable hits like “If You Could Read My Mind” and “Sundown”.
Ian Tyson, who wrote the iconic Canadian song “Four Strong Winds”, and worked as a prolific solo cowboy performer-songwriter as well as in Ian and Sylvia, Canada’s great contribution to the hootenanny era.
Bruce Cockburn, whose own extensive catalogue, addressed more sensitive and social criticism types. “Wonderin’ Where the Lions Are”, “Waiting for a Miracle”. Bruce is the main activist-performer we’ve ever had. He walked the talk big-time. “If a Tree Falls”, “If I Had a Rocket launcher”
Joni Mitchell, who will be mourned deeply on both sides of the border–the first great female folkie, succeeding Joan Baez and Judy Collins. Her personal song catalogue is huge; in most minds, our top female songwriter. Who has not heard “Both Sides Now”, “Woodstock”, and her “They’ve paved paradise and out up a parking lot” song. I love her reinterpretations using orchestra arrangements; our most underrated female jazz performer. (Far more real and soulful than Diana Krall.) A visual artist as well.
But above all, will fall the huge international shadow of Leonard Cohen, our supreme bard. He will be mourned in many countries around the world. Women, in particular, will be in mourning everywhere! Cohen has cast the largest spell of all Canadian performers over sensibilities everywhere. Our ultimate Canadian icon. Check out his last two live videos (with CDs) to savour his genius, talent, and sprawling sensibility. Many readers will consider him our greatest poet.
(bust on top of my classic British literature bookshelf unit; Shakespeare reigneth over all)
“The readiness is all.” —Hamlet
“There’s nothing serious in mortality.”–Macbeth
A lot of guidance and wisdom in just those two lines.
Cf. June 14/2014 entry for what I consider to be Shakespeare’s most relevant quotations. (Dates for previous entries in upper right column.)
The only Bond I ever went to in a theatre with my Dad. He really quite enjoyed it, more than me. It was the only Bond featuring George Lazenby, a little known U.K. commercials actor, who sort of resembled what many Bond readers probably imagined the character to look like. And he did, though without strong overt projections like Connery, and was a far cry from the overt action-Bonds of Dalton and Brosnan. And so he was quickly terminated like a Bond villain by the producers who wasted no time, even advertising at the end of this film that Diamonds Are Forever was next in the series (with Connery back at the helm).
This was a different Bond, that’s for sure. A Bond in love with The Avengers’ Diana Rigg, including wedding bells. A Bond ready to retire and chuck it all to live and love fully; an antiheroic Bond ready to drop out like so many others in the late ’60s.
Even the action scenes were low key until the final half-hour when some of the series’ strongest action scenes take place involving ice, snow, and the cliched storming of Blofeld’s mountain peak pleasure-palace.
Watched it last night after many a year, from the Ultimate Edition series boxset. Color was 3-4 x better even than what I remember from the theatre showing way back when. The print looked excellent. Lazenby looked like a credible Bond though there was a lack of facial emotions play which doomed him from the get-go from ever carrying on the role.
Diana Rigg was her usual best: sexy-looking with a terrific sense of humor. The storyline was reasonable and there were really no weak scenes, which has caused some reviewers to remarkably proclaim this the best Bond of all. I don’t know if I would agree entirely with those pundits, but I quite enjoyed this movie this time around. It was maybe 3-4 times better than I remember it. So maybe, as did many other fans, I missed Connery too much, especially after his five strong turns at the role, an impression reinforced by his return in the funny one-off Never Say Never Again which featured the oldest Bond of all in more human situations sans gizmos.
So an easy 8/10 for this entertaining one with Lazenby resembling what Fleming had intended in his books. He does quite well even if he’s not the favorite Bond. And the movie has little of the goofiness and over-the-topness with weak writing that followed it. It could also serve as a reasonable introduction to what the series was all about at its best.
(signed U.K. ed.)
(the strong movie adaptation; a unique pleasurable film)
Two of the major highlights of CanLit and Canadian film.
Mordecai Richler’s best and wittiest character novel and a well-done movie adaptation true to the spirit of the book.
A man’s life, warts and all, from youth to death presented in amusing and mysterious uncompromising detail in both versions.
The movie, if you’ve not seen it, is an irreverent romantic crime-mystery which portrays the flawed protagonist sympathetically. Barney is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve even though he hurts others in the process. Paul Giamatti makes an excellent Barney, Dustin Hoffman his tactless father, Minnie Driver his frustrated overbearing wife, and Rosamund Pike his beautiful third wife who turns out to be much better than Barney thought. A very different kind of movie experience and certainly uniquely different and better done than 90% of Canadian movies.
But if you really want to get to know Barney well and better, read the original! Excellent use of point of view, very funny, and thoroughly engaging. I still think it’s the most entertaining high-quality Canadian novel ever written.
is mostly about possibilities and which ones and pleasures are realized.
(when the two worlds merge) and fantasy is made real. But, ironically, there still is something to be said for the world of Imagination and deep inner pleasures of fantasies, whether realized or not.
(rare movie poster behind my study door)
The Night of the Following Day, 1968; from what is often referred to as Brando’s ‘lost years’, but featuring some of his most interesting, risky, deep roles (The Nightcomers, Reflections in a Golden Eye).
A kidnapping extortion plot with failure and doom written all over it given the motley crew of kidnappers. Marlon Brando as Bud the wised-up hip chauffeur. Richard Boone as the sadistic double-crossing sadist. Rita Moreno as the for-real doped up driver, Jess Hahn as her loser-brother and Bud pal. Pamela Franklin as the innocent nubile victim. Every character has problems, defects, and foibles in this bleak psychological caper-thriller.
A very deceptive ‘simple’ film, heavy on European look, ambient sound, and chilly atmosphere. The art director Jean Boulet and Willy Kurant (cinematographer) are chiefly responsible for the use of light, shadow, color, and settings. Dark, bleak. odd, and at times dream-like. The moody, quirky jazz score is flat-out one of the best, weirdest ever committed to a film; it is by U.K.’s Stanley Myers who gives the perfect undertones and counterpoints to what characters are thinking and feeling. A kudo too, for the omnipresent sound of the ocean by the beach digs where most of the action takes place; it echoes the hollowness and craziness of the characters’ lives. I should also put a good word in for Gordon Pilkington who edited the tense action and moods, often intercutting leaving the audience hanging from a previous scene. Then there’s the story of Brando kicking director Hubert Cornfield off the picture’s ending when Boone, of all people, took over for the bizarre dramatic action scenes!
The ending is totally unforeseen and there are at least two ways to read it. I favor the 2nd, less conventional interpretation and think it the better, most logical one, knowing as much as I do now about consciousness.
My impression on seeing the movie all these years later after a strong first impression is Wow! Brando was never better and more effective. You’ll find bits of The Wild One and On the Waterfront in his blond-haired, fantastically-muscled-for-44 self/persona. He is the most interesting character always in this film though everyone else can be identified or sympathized with. (Nice casting and performances all-round; Boone is meanly delightful and wicked.) Brando has never looked better/was very much in his prime/his acting chops wonderfully and coolly intact. This film is an overlooked gem of filmic experience, very European in flavor (shot on location in seaside France) with nice insertions of French language and a nice-guy gendarme who tragically falls for Vi (Moreno).
Because of ego–which is how we generally experience life and the world–we often assume too much, trying to control others, our lives and the outside world as if they or it were mere extensions of our preferences and fantasies rather than of a greater external context in which we all live.
And so we mostly try to manage our days, reining them in to our liking and personal preferences. So you can imagine the frustration when one is opposed, duped or used in the course of a day by others and systems–‘The Machine’ as ’60ers used to call the latter. We even take things for granted when things do go our way, assuming we are lucky or entitled.
But everything changes and passes. And there are days and times when we feel like we have no or little control and whining, complaining, and argument are the dominant modes. Sometimes primitive DNA behaviors have their way with us, too, and normalcy and reason break down or the irrational clearly seems to have the upper hand. Then chaos theory may come into play and we realize how much or how often we live a Theatre of the Absurd existence. It is at such times that we are forced to recognize and acknowledge that our lives may not be our own, that change is/has been/will always be constantly ongoing in the form of process/es.
Indeed, the only constant in our lives–even when they are least conflictful and relatively placid–is change. (“Nothing’s going to change my world” as Lennon chanted in “Across the Universe”–which becomes, at best, a fool’s refrain and guide to fully experiencing or managing life.)
Is it any wonder then that many people of this ilk constantly run into problems and conflicts when others and the world do not line up with their egos. And that is often the ‘problem’ with others–by and large–they don’t always please us, conform to our wishes, or have their own plans, dreams, and desires. A certain built-in, hard-wired naivete, then, of the self-encapsulated ego-life, a life usually with blinders on consciousness-wise, in relation to how things really actually are for the individual and the external world dynamic and context. Thus, we get much conflict, much inability or laziness to change (people often being as hard-wired as they realistically are from childhood on).
Hope, there is, though, if people accept one another for who and what they basically are. In that, some hope and room for understanding and appreciation of the uniqueness and presence of other individuals. And in that, hope for personal and mutual growth and love through various kinds and levels of relationships.
