Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Faster, James Gleick

    Faster, James Gleick

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Vintage, 2000 reprint of 1999 original, 330 pages, C$21.00 pb, ISBN 0-679-77548-X

    I am one of the people James Gleick complains about in Faster.  I am the guy who walks past other people on the sidewalk.  I am the guy who fumes whenever cars drive just under the speed limit.  I am the guy who gets annoyed whenever other people don’t pay attention, dawdle, can’t decide or otherwise start messing with my own hyper-efficient schedule.  I am, in other words, part of the problem that Gleick describes when he talks about “the acceleration of just about everything”.

    Now, keep in mind Faster‘s copyright date of 1999, right at the peak of the dot-com boom; a short era during which “dot-com time” came to shake what was people’s sense of time.  Suddenly, the online world changed every six months; companies doubled in 60 days, crashed and burned in 18 months.  And things kept accelerating, at least until the dot-bomb recession of 2000-2001.  Faster is very much a book of its era, a horrified contemplation of how fast things can possibly go, alongside doubt that anyone but a few inhuman freaks will be able to hold on to the monster we have collectively created.

    As such, most of Faster feels very familiar.  Gleick, the author of such seminal science vulgarization books as Genius and Chaos here turns his attention to a mixture of historical explanation, technical vulgarization and cultural criticism.  In a nutshell: Here’s why/how things went from slow to fast; here’s how fast they really are at the moment; here’s why this is a problem.  Fast food!  Workaholics!  Over-optimized airline schedules!  24-hour news cycle!  Multitasking! Quick-cutting!  MTV!  After a while, it becomes easier to portray Gleick as the stereotypical old man shouting at the kids, not just because they’re on his lawn, but because they can get off of it faster than he can shake his cane at them.  (Also; grandpa, there are better examples of action moviemaking than Sphere.)

    The irony here is that Gleick is not wrong, nor has his kvetching been disproven by the past twelve years.  The world has indeed become much faster, and on a very personal level: You just have to contemplate Twitter or the Facebook news feed to find out that near-real-time publishing to the masses has become ubiquitous: It just takes a moderately-good smartphone with an average data plan to consume and broadcast the most trivial details of our lives.  Meanwhile, the big boys of corporate media have grown even savvier in getting their product to the consumer even faster: As of 2011, DVDs are available not much more than three months after theatrical release; eBooks are launched simultaneously with their paper equivalents (otherwise customers complain loudly on Amazon); most music is sold instantly through digital channels (goodbye music stores); news stories are filed and dissected in minutes… and wristwatches (a subject of one of Faster’s early chapters) are now fashion accessories, because there are now built-in clocks in just about any electronic device that surrounds us.  Our culture digests ideas, fads and memes in weeks (Rebecca Black’s “Friday” was released when I read Faster, almost still hip when I wrote this review a month later, but passé to the point of nostalgia by the time I edited it three further months later) and visibly shows signs of impatience whenever it has to wait.  We have become Faster’s worst nightmare.

    And yet we still deal with it.  One thing that Faster doesn’t do very well is in pointing out that it’s still relatively easy to punch out of the schedule whenever convenient.  Journalists and politicians may be stuck feeding the news channels, but the rest of us can lay low for a few days and stop paying attention to what’s not part of our lives.  Facebook’s reported recent loss in popularity hints at a truth that Social Media apologists and James Gleick alike aren’t happy to acknowledge: That once past the newness effect, everyone self-selects their pace of life.  After a few days/weeks/months/years, many people move on from their blog postings, twittering or facebook updates: What remains at the slower core is the kernel of what we are.

    But as much fun as it is to critique the social critique, there is plenty to like about Faster: The early part of the book has some fascinating material regarding how the notion of globalized time came to be (every American town had its own clock before railways required some standardization), and a chapter on airline scheduling makes the good point that the more efficient a system is, the more it is vulnerable to even small problems –they cascade into big problem due to the lack of slack built in the system.  There are good digressions here and there, such as the sequence in which Gleick pushes the clichéd “Americans spend X minutes every day doing…” statistics into an absurdist dead-end, and a demonstration of “The Strong Law of Small numbers” (ie; there aren’t enough small numbers to be useful.)

    I does help that even if Gleick may be a curmudgeon in training, he’s a dependably readable writer.  Faster is entertaining even when its relationship with reality turns a bit suspect; its thesis may be equal part dubious and paranoid, it’s still largely correct.  I do miss the more scientifically-minded topics of Chaos and Genius compared to this more free-flowing cultural/technical critique, but if Faster is a bit of a disappointment, it still has enough good material for compelling cocktail party chatter.

  • S.W.A.T.: Firefight (2011)

    S.W.A.T.: Firefight (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2011) At a time where the video rental business is crumbling, the Direct-to-Video market is undergoing a curious rehabilitation, even when it comes to cheap action movies.  Helped along with polyvalent digital cameras and cheaper post-production processes, DTV films now look better than ever, and manage to sport scripts, actors and direction that are well above the mediocrity we’ve gotten used to in movies that never played in theaters.  S.W.A.T.: Firefight looks like a perfect example of the form: Sequel-in-name-only to a better-known theatrical action film solely for marketing purposes (there’s practically no story link to the original), it’s a reasonably entertaining way to spend an hour and a half.  Part of the appeal is due to square-jawed Gabriel Macht in the lead role, as a Los Angeles SWAT leader sent to Detroit in order to train the local team.  Refreshingly, the first half of the film adopts a convincingly realistic attitude in portraying a competent SWAT team with minimal dysfunction: S.W.A.T.: Firefight is never as interesting as when it’s showing off the team training, bonding and working together in showcase sequences.  The choice to set the film in the ruins of Detroit is intriguing.  Shannon Kane makes a good impression as a tough new recruit.  Unfortunately, the second half of the film gets farther away from the SWAT rationale the longer it focuses on another improbably all-powerful antagonist who takes a personal dislike to the hero.  It’s not as it Robert Patrick isn’t good, but that the film becomes a lot more predictable once the plot is sketched, and far less interesting as a result.  (It also ends a bit too quickly.)  At least the film moves with energy; director Benny Boom uses his limited budget effectively, even though touches like a gun fastened to a camera give an unpleasant video-game jolt out of the film’s experience.  While the picture quality can’t escape a certain video softness, S.W.A.T.: Firefight looks good, goes by pleasantly, scores a few good scenes and exceeds the low expectation associated with a DTV film.

  • Porky’s (1981)

    Porky’s (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2011) For decades, Porky’s kept a place in film history as an unexpected answer to the question “What’s the highest-grossing Canadian movie of all time?”  It isn’t much of a claim to fame, but it got me interested enough to give it a look.  What has made it to 2011 isn’t much of a classic.  Porky’s isn’t particularly raunchy by the standards of the films it influenced, but it’s certainly unsophisticated, low-budget, scattered and badly structured.  The plot often goes away for a while, returning in-between practical joke set-pieces and other slice of 1950s life as seen from the early eighties.  Feeling a bit long even at 94 minutes, the film is almost pathologically male-centric (women characters are either jokes or cyphers), and feels bigoted even despite some lip-service paid to race-blind male bonding.  Still, there’s something almost endearing about the hormone-driven characters, the carefree atmosphere of movie comedy high-schools and the low-stakes nature of the subplots.  There’s also a pleasing quality to the abundant dialogue between the characters, and a nice fluidity to the way the camera moves in a few scenes.  As far as historical impact goes, Kim Cattrall makes a howling impression in a secondary role; more seriously, you can almost see in Porky’s the blueprint for countless other teenage sex comedies leading straight to American Pie and its ilk.  It’s neither particularly sophisticated nor memorable, but it’s not an entire waste of time.  The “25th anniversary Edition” DVD has no extra features (not even subtitles) and the picture often shows signs of digital over-compression, which is enough to make anyone wonder how bad the regular DVD edition can be.

  • Color and Light, James Gurney

    Color and Light, James Gurney

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Andrews McMeel, 2010, 224 pages, C$28.99 tp, ISBN 978-0-7407-9771-2

    You’d have a hard time guessing from these reviews, but I do buy and enjoy a lot of Science Fiction and Fantasy art books.  One of my most cherished sections of my library is the one where Michael Whelan art collections sit next to those by Donato Giancola, Chris Foss, Stephan Martinière and a few others.  But enjoying those books is simple; reviewing them isn’t when an appreciation of most of them boil down to “pretty pictures; skilled artists; will buy next volume”.  I get bored just thinking about writing 500 words to explain that.

    But James Gurney’s Color and Light is something different.  Billed as “A guide for the Realist Painter”, it’s a book-length tutorial by the creator of the SF/fantasy series Dinotopia.  Aimed primarily at visual artists, it studies topics of colour and light using examples from Gurney’s career, either produced for the commercial market or as a personal study.  Far from a basic “Here’s how to paint” manual, Color and Light tackles questions that even season artists will struggle to master.  A sampling of page headings: Overcast Light, The Mud Debate, Is Moonlight Blue?, Subsurface Scattering; The Hair Secret, Golden Hour Lighting; Snow and Ice; Mountain Streams…

    For artists, this isn’t Gurney’s first instructional book: In 2009, Andrews McMeel published Imaginative Realism, a similar book that provided artists with a toolset on “How to Paint What doesn’t Exist”.  It covered ways to adapt the familiar into the unknown nature of fantasy illustration, but also discussed topics such as visual composition.  Color and Light is a natural follow-up to Imaginative Realism, describing in more details an essential set of visual skills.  An interesting part of the book’s approach is how it uses modern tools such as digital photography in order to explain traditional canvas-based techniques.

    Not being an artist, I can only guess as to the true worth of what Gurney outlines here.  What I can say is that Color and Light feels like a backstage peek at the mind of painters as they learn to see the world with far fewer assumptions as the rest of us lay viewers.  The book deconstructs elements of color and lighting in order to highlight the subtle ways that reality influences our perception, our understanding of what we see, and even our moods.  Some professional artists may have a near-unconscious understanding of topics such as pigmentation, lightfastness and caustics, but for non-artistic laymen such as myself, Gurney’s explanations hint at the depth of accumulated knowledge that come to rest behind the eyes of a painter.  Part of Color and Light’s impact is in presenting enormously complex topics in a manner that is simple to understand, yet complete enough to suggest the hidden depths of the idea.

    This being said, you can appreciate Color and Light as an art-book if you want to.  There’s some great art on nearly every page, as Gurney uses examples from his own professional and personal work to illustrate the topic at hand.  Much of it comes from Dinotopia, of course, but a lot of them are from Gurney’s personal work and sketches, sometimes reflecting where he traveled around the world.  It is, in its own way, an impressive testimony not only to Gurney’s technical credentials as he meticulously explains art history and techniques to readers, but also a demonstration of his willingness to constantly improve his own understanding of the art and distil his wisdom in a few hundred pages.  I don’t think any professional ever sets out to coast on what they know for the rest of their career, but Gurney demonstrates the opposite, and how he is, even at the height of his own personal success, still trying new things, still daring to expose himself to criticism by putting together an instructional book.

    For those who are curious to see what Gurney is now working on, you can always follow his daily blog for regular updates, artwork and ideas.  Also get ahold of Color and Light, preferably alongside Imaginative Realism: Beyond being a good look at Gurney’s career so far, it’s an astonishing peek at the mind of a working artist, and the compromises with which they work in nearly every piece.  It’s not just an art book worth buying, not just an art book worth studying, it’s an art book worth reading.

  • The Hangover (2009)

    The Hangover (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2011) I’m just as surprised as anyone else that I lasted two years without seeing one of the cultural movie touchstones of 2009, the R-rated comedy that affirmed the dominance of the arrested-male-teenager as the comic archetype of the time.  I have little patience with the form and didn’t expect to like The Hangover much, but as it happens there’s quite a bit to like in its cheerfully anarchic approach to plotting, as it uses flashbacks, comic detective work and wild characters in one big pile.  Todd Phillips’ directing is assured and neatly guides viewers through a more complex narrative structure than is the norm for comedies.  It helps a lot that the characters are interesting in their own right: Bradley Cooper’s natural charisma transforms a borderline-repellent role into something nearly cool, while Ed Helms proves a lot less annoying than I’d initially guessed and Ken Jeong supercharges every single scene he’s in.  Small roles for Mike Tyson (not someone I’d hold as a role model) and Jeffrey Tambor also work well, although I still can’t think of Zach Galifianakis as anything but obnoxious (and discover retroactively that he played the same character in Due Date).  For all of the icky what-happens-in-Vegas immaturity, there are a few chuckles here and there: it’s hard to begrudge a film as likable as it is foul-mouthed.  Alas, I didn’t go completely crazy for the film: Fonder flashbacks to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (curiously unacknowledged) and the far funnier absurdist amnesia masterpiece Dude, Where’s My Car? held me back.  But comedy’s notoriously subjective, and it’s not as if I actually disliked The Hangover: I just found it a bit underwhelming, most likely conceived from assumptions that I don’t share.

  • X: First Class (2011)

    X: First Class (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2011) I wasn’t expecting anything after the underwhelming Wolverine, but this X-Men: First Class is a return to the strengths of the original trilogy: Some thematic heft, good acting performances, clever sequences and an sense of cool that doesn’t fall into self-indulgence.  Even as a prequel, it works just fine: There’s some dramatic irony at the way the characters come together and split apart, and the script is wildly successful at weaving the October Missile Crisis in the fabric of the plot.  James McAvoy may be good as Charles Xavier, but it’s Michael Fassbender who steals the show as Magneto, with plenty of good supporting roles for people such as Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence and Oliver Platt.  (Meanwhile, January Jones -for all she brings to the film by parading around in white thigh-highs and gogo boots- seems unacceptably stiff).  The initial X-Men trilogy worked well in large part due to its thematic ambitions about bigotry, normalcy and self-acceptance; if First Class doesn’t do much than rehash the same issues from “didn’t ask, didn’t tell” to “mutant and proud”, it’s still far more interesting than other recent meaningless comic-book films like Thor.  The idea to set the film in the early sixties has refreshing stylistic implications (despite the anachronism of late-sixties fashion) that carry through to the Saul-Bass-tinged closing credit sequence.  Director Matthew Vaughn manages to helm a surprisingly talky film with the right mixture of action and character moments, while giving some energy to the whole.  X-Men: First Class may be a small victory for style over rehashed substance, but even in repeating itself it seems quite a bit better than the norm –and in presenting itself attractively, it makes itself difficult to criticize.  Suffice to say that it’s an enjoyable film, and even one that may get viewers to watch the original trilogy again –something that seemed improbable after Wolverine.

  • Wampeters, Foma & Grandfaloons, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

    Wampeters, Foma & Grandfaloons, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Delacorte, 1974, 285 pages, $??.?? hc, ISBN 0-440-08717-1

    In the big list of things I still have to do, “Read more Kurt Vonnegut” remains essential.  While Vonnegut is best-known for his fiction, his public persona is equally well-defined by the non-fiction he has written over his long career.  Published in 1974, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons collects some of Vonnegut’s non-fiction pieces dating from 1965 to 1974.  This period is significant in that it marked a significant transition for the author: Two of his best-known novels, Slaughterhouse Five (1969) and Breakfast of Champions (1973), were published during this period, and his profile appreciated accordingly.  Read the collection carefully, and you can almost see the transition, as Vonnegut goes from writing semi-journalism pieces, to opining professionally, to becoming the subject of lengthy interviews.

    An unusually interesting preface presents Vonnegut at his best: self-reflective to the point of self-deprecation, expressing complex ideas with short sentences and simple vocabulary.  It’s easy to become a Vonnegut fan when he seems determined to undermine the false elevation of the writer in the reader’s mind.  I suppose that this, in large part, also accounts for Vonnegut’s reputation as a humanist.

    For Science Fiction fans with lengthy memories, the book opens big with a short piece examining Vonnegut’s relationship with the SF genre as of 1965: Vonnegut found himself identified with the genre through what he wrote rather than his intentions.  (“I learned from the reviewers that I was a science-fiction writer” [P.1]) Having no association with the SF community, he spends much of the essay looking at the genre from a bemused observer’s point of view, eventually concluding that the genre is infantile, self-centered and doomed to disappear, since “all lodges [dissolve], sooner or later.” [p.5] SF fans will find it hard not to cringe at the accuracy of the statement.  (Amusingly, the book also collects “Fortitude”, which is nothing but a Science Fiction play in one act.  Vonnegut himself published in acknowledged SF magazines early in his career, making some bewildered statements seem disingenuous.)  Curiously, this essay is seldom acknowledged in SF circles.

    But then again, I do live a sheltered existence, and it’s pieces like “Brief Encounters on the Inland Waterway” that make me wonder at how much of the world I still don’t know.  The Inland Waterway, or more accurately “Intracostal Waterway”, is a set of waterways allowing boaters along the eastern and southern American seaboard to navigate from New Jersey to Texas without having to brave the open sea.  Vonnegut used it to travel from Massachusetts to Florida aboard the Kennedy family yacht, and reports his impressions in a series of short, simple vignettes that give a feel for an entirely different world than highway driving.  Digging a bit deeper, I was even more surprised to find out that the Intracostal Waterway links to a nautical route called “The Great Loop”, a component of which passes not a kilometer away from my house.  So, yeah; I live next to a water highway leading straight to Florida.  That’s not exactly the kind of discovery I expected when I picked up Wampeters, Foma & Grandfaloons at a used book sale, but I’ll take it.

    Other pieces mix reporting with opinion.  “Teaching the Unteachable” is an acid look at the racket of university writing workshops; “Yes, We Have No Nirvanas” is a half-serene, half-sceptical profile of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; “There’s a Maniac Loose Out There” offers an impressionistic account of Cape Cod dealing with a serial killer, somewhat reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson (whose Fear and Loathing: On the campaign Trail ’72 is favourably reviewed later in the book); “The Mysterious Madame Blavatsky” is a portrait of the historical celebrity, whereas, more grimly, “Biafra: A People Betrayed” offers impression on the war-torn African country.

    But reporting isn’t Vonnegut’s strength as much as his commentary is.  America from 1965 to 1974 was a cauldron of controversies and revolution, and Vonnegut was there to comment upon the events.  Various pieces consider the American Space Program as an expensive fireworks show, bombing in Vietnam as ineffective torture and American politics as set-dressing for a war of the winners against the losers.  Various addresses to various audiences offer Vonnegut speaking directly to his audience.  The book ends on a lengthy and revealing Playboy interview discussing his inspirations, history, writing methods and progressive prominence as a writer.

    The result, as you may expect, is a quirky packaging of pieces that show Vonnegut during one of his most vital periods.  It’s a great way to get acquainted with Vonnegut’s voice, even though I suspect that fans of the author will get the most out of it.  It’s funny; it’s deceptively easy to read and it combines sympathy with cynicism in a way that only Vonnegut could achieve.

  • Conviction (2010)

    Conviction (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2011) There’s something almost earnestly old-fashioned about Conviction, a film that has few scruples about belonging to the “inspiring story based on true events” category.  Here, a woman puts herself through law school for the express purpose of freeing her wrongfully accused brother.  It ends pretty much like you’d think.  Still, Conviction is more polished than you’d expect: the setup is handled efficiently, and the early structure of the film seamlessly meshes two levels of flashbacks to explain how the characters got where they are.  This is the kind of film that showcases actors, and Hilary Swank is very good in the lead role, with a strikingly transformed Sam Rockwell as her wrongfully accused brother.  I almost always, for some reason, enjoy seeing Minnie Driver on-screen, and she gets a lot of screen time as a sidekick to the protagonist’s legal investigation.  For a film of its genre, it’s curiously restrained until the very end, and clever about how it takes us from one detail of the case to the next.  It doesn’t necessarily spring Conviction up and away from typical TV-movie-of-the-week fare (it will live best on DVD than it did in theaters), but it does pretend to be a dramatic awards contender, and it’s not misplaced in those ambitions.  It all piles up to amount to a satisfying film, but not an overly memorable one.

  • The Nasty Bits, Anthony Bourdain

    The Nasty Bits, Anthony Bourdain

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bloomsbury, 2007 reprint of 2006 original, 288 pages, C$16.50 tp, ISBN-978-1-59691-360-8

    In my continued quest to read all of Anthony Bourdain’s written output, I am now left to digest the “collected varietal cuts, usable trim, scraps and bones” of his career so far.  Or, in more prosaic terms, a collection of various pieces written following the runaway success of Kitchen Confidential and his rise as a celebrity food writer.  The Nasty Bits brings together 36 non-fiction pieces, accompanied by a fiction novelette and an essential appendix that comments on the various pieces.  The non-fiction content is subdivided in thematic seconds meant to evoke the five basic tastes, but the real flavour here is Bourdain’s punk-rock approach to food and travel writing.

    A standout piece, for instance, is “Food and Loathing in Las Vegas”, a Hunter S. Thompson-inspired piece in which Bourdain describes his first visit to the new Las Vegas food scene.  As entertaining commentary wrapped in semi-fictional homage to its source material, it’s a laugh –and prior to Bourdain’s influence, it’s not always the kind of writing you could find in food/travel magazines.  Much of The Nasty Bits is unpretentious travel writing liberally seasoned with descriptions of good food: Bourdain’s prose is seldom less than fascinating, and he’s got a knack for living interesting experiences.  They don’t all have to involve eating strange new bugs in third-world countries: In “The Love Boat”, Bourdain tries to survive on a posh cruise liner with an in-cabin kitchenette and an on-board gourmet grocer: It’s a look at high-end decadent living from a reformed line cook, and it’s about as interesting a confrontation of world-views as you can imagine.  (More importantly, Bourdain manages to cook a perfect risotto with what he’s given on-board.)

    Other pieces stand out for less-charming reasons.  Bourdain’s never been shy to criticize what he sees as being wrong with food culture, and in “Woody Harrelson: A Culinary Muse” takes aim at the actor for insisting on a vegan diet and ignoring what local food culture had to offer while traveling abroad.  Such openness to world cuisine (and Asian food in general) is a hallmark of Bourdain’s writing, and several other pieces document his growing fascination with the world of gastronomic possibilities.  An interesting pair of pieces in this regard are “Notes from the Road” and “Die, Die Must Try”, presenting Bourdain’s brutal first visit to Singapore and a far friendlier follow-up.

    Such growth as a person and as a writer is an essential part of The Nasty Bits, allowing us to follow Bourdain’s quick evolution as Kitchen Confidential, then his TV shows, gradually opened more possibilities for him.  From a humble cook with a troubled past to a world-traveling food writer, Bourdain has grown up in public in the six years between Kitchen Confidential and The Nasty Bits, and this evolution is reflected here in many ways, between pieces but also in the second thoughts that ends the book.  In “Sleaze Gone By”, he wears his scrappy New York formative influences like a badge of honour in recalling with some fondness the rougher pre-Giuliani neighbourhoods he used to frequent.  But significantly, the back of the book commentary takes it back: “A pretty glib, wildly over-romanticized look at the New York City of my misspent youth.” [P.285])

    Some other pieces stand out because of their unusual subject matter.  In “Warning Signs”, Bourdain describes a well-known London steakhouse chain and itemizes ten reasons why the place ought to be closed down; “The Good, Old Stuff” discusses how several restaurants still serve unfashionable food straight from decades past; “Viva Mexico! Viva Ecuador” pays tribute to the hard-working immigrants toiling away in American kitchens; “When the Cooking’s Over” discusses what chefs do after their shift is done, with several examples in various cities; “The Cook’s Companion” provides an essential bibliography of great writing about the real life of restaurants; and “System D” borrows from the French to explain one of the essential traits of any competent kitchen worker.

    A special mention should also be made of “A Chef’s Christmas”, which showcases Bourdain’s fiction credentials to a wider audience.  The piece itself isn’t particularly refined (it self-consciously relies on a rich deus ex snowstorm to provide a happy ending, and seems to hop in-between half a dozen characters’ viewpoint almost at random in only thirty pages.) but it’s an entertaining change of pace from the non-fiction pieces and as witty as Bourdain can be.

    All of it amounts to a collection that Bourdain fans will find essential.  The Nasty Bits is not the best introduction to Bourdain’s work (For that, try Kitchen Confidential, or the No Reservation TV series), but it’s a good satisfying read.

  • Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

    Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2011) Expectations ran high for this spin-off to the swashbuckling action/adventure trilogy of 2003-2007, but few expected this follow-up to be this… dull.  Despite sporting the same screenwriting team than the first films, this fourth entry feels flat, unremarkable and even boring at times.  The scale of everything has been scaled back (there are noticeably fewer special effects set-pieces, and not a single sea battle), while the sense of fun that seemed so contagious in the first two-third of the series seems lessened as well.  The first few scenes show how off-track the film feels, with broad comedy that fails to amuse, familiar hum-drum action beats and incoherent plotting.  Those who couldn’t get enough of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow will reconsider as the series tries to promote him to protagonist status, putting far too much dramatic demands on a trickster/comic foil character.  While neither Depp nor Penelope Cruz as the feisty Angelica do badly, they’re not very well served by a script that feels noticeably uneven, even sloppy to the point of confusing the audience.  The film even feels cheap at times, its climax taking place on an obvious soundstage, three groups clashing without much of a sense of involvement.  There are a number of scenes that work well (the palm tree escape shows flashes of the madcap action sequences that made the first two films of the series so memorable), but they never sustain any kind of narrative energy.  (A sequence set aboard a perilously-perched derelict Spanish galleon ends up noticeably short, to the point of cheating viewers.)  In fact, the surprise about this film is how much intriguing material it squanders without care.  You’d think that it would take work to mess up something involving mermaids, Blackbeard, the Fountain of Life, bottled ships, Keith Richards, Gemma Ward and Judi Dench in a split-second cameo… and yet the film unspools without raising too much excitement.  Even the film’s link to Tim Powers’ fantasy novel On Stranger Tides is slight: the film is “suggested by” the novel, but it seems more like a case of retroactive acknowledgement of the first film’s debt than any correspondence to the written work.  This way, at least, Powers gets plausible deniability when people will ask him about the mess that is the film itself.

  • The Perfect Thing, Steven Levy

    The Perfect Thing, Steven Levy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Simon & Schuster, 2006, 284 pages, C$32.00 hc, ISBN 978-0-7432-8522-3

    I am not an Apple fanboy.  In the great PC/Mac debate, I will forever be against the paternalistic walled-ecosystem paradigm represented by Apple.  I held out as long as I could before buying an iPod Touch, and it was only because I had to admit that it was the best PDA available on the market.  But you know what?  I love my iPod.  I jailbreak it as soon as I can as a matter of principle (I feel entitled to access the file system of every computer I own), but I love it.  It does what I expect of it, and quite a bit more.  I started ripping MP3s in 1999 and have owned a variety of MP3-playing devices from the RioVolt SP250 to the Palm Tungsten T2, but my iPod Touch 2G (and now, 4G) has easily been the best.

    Such a sentiment is widespread enough that it is the bedrock of Steven Levy’s The Perfect Thing, a book dedicated to what was then the iPod in its classic scroll-wheel form.  (Not even the touch version, introduced a year after the book.)  Levy, a technology journalist with an interest in cultural issues, makes a convincing case that the iPod represents a fundamental shift in our relationship with music, and doesn’t miss a facet of the iPod culture in the way he studies the history and development of the iPod, its impact on music listening and its consequences on our own individuality.

    Levy is so fascinated by the concept of “Shuffling”, in fact, that The Perfect Thing comes in numerous versions, with autonomous middle chapters “shuffled” in a different order from one copy to the other.  (We are wisely warned of this in the book’s opening “Author’s Note”.)  However novel, this idea ends up being a clumsy experiment.  As a reader, I believe in the development of ideas, in arguments building atop each other, in context being established before an explanation of consequences.  However independent Levy has designed his chapters, some of them still read as out of order in my copy of The Perfect Thing: The “Apple” chapter describing Apple and Steve Jobs come late in the book, setting up Job’s formidable reputation too late to be effective; tragically, it follows the Origins chapter that details how Jobs’ incessant attention to detail was a major factor in the iPod’s polish.  Some chapters about the second-order effect of the iPod’s feature are at the beginning of my copy of the book, which takes away from the development of Levy’s thesis.  So, conclusion: no shuffling in books, okay?

    This nit put aside, The Perfect Thing is, even five years and two technological generations later, still one of the ultimate books about the iPod.  It’s filled with interesting, even little-known information.  It draws conclusions about the behaviour of iPod users that have been validated by the time since then.  In fact, I suspect that the book is so good that it makes assumptions that are completely self-obvious now.  One of the most interesting things about consumer electronic progress is the way their constant daily use quickly overwrites our memories of how things used to be.  Say that the iPod was not for sale until the end of 2001 and your audience will furrow their brows and say “Really?” The iPad?  Introduced in April 2010, not even 18 months ago as I edit this review.  The iPod and its inspired competitors have been a part of our daily lives for so long that it’s hard to remember previous modes of music consumption.  Shuffle, as Levy loves to point out, is an almost-entirely digital-music concept: Before then, you were lucky (and well-off) if you owned a CD jukebox that could slowly shuffle between five or ten CDs.  Otherwise, it was a strictly linear listening experience, even if you were a mix-tape whiz.  (I had to laugh in recognition when Levy described how memories of one song could blend with the memory of the transition between the previous and next song on the same disc)

    The chapter on the development of the iPod is a crystal-clear example of good tech journalism, and it’s an eloquent testimony about the need for end-user polishing in the development cycle.  Levy builds the product’s features into a platform that changes the way people think of themselves and others (especially if music is an important part of their self-identity), the way Apple have taken existing technological trends to fashion a workable ecosystem for media delivery (something that’s even truer now than in 2006) and the self-expression possibilities of the podcast, something now obvious that wasn’t even practical to any but a privileged few a decade ago.

    The proof of The Perfect Thing’s thesis and conclusions could be found all around me as I enjoyed reading the book on my daily bus commute.  It took me six rides to read the book, and every single time, in the small universe of the twenty people lodged at the back of the bus where I sit, I could never see fewer than two (and often as high as seven) personal devices either branded Apple or inspired by it.  The iPod is indeed the perfect thing of our time.

  • Tigerland (2000)

    Tigerland (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2011) Director Joel Schumacher’s public profile arguably peaked in the late nineties with his disastrous stint as the director of the two worst Batman movies ever made.  Upon its release, Tigerland had been hailed as a return to form for the director and it’s easy to see why even a decade later: A Vietnam movie set entirely stateside, this drama studies the gradual transformation of a cynical young man as he goes through infantryman training in anticipation of a foreign deployment.  The harsh reality of the training is well-depicted, but it’s really then-unknown Colin Farrell’s performance as Roland Bozz that holds all the attention.  Mirroring contemporary audiences’ mindset, Bozz knows that Vietnam is a prodigious waste, has read all of the anti-war books and has little patience for the charade of training.  He’s a free spirit stuck in a machine grinding down everyone to the same component pieces.  It would have been easy for the film to turn into a comedy in which an unrepentant Bozz knows best, or a crude anti-war statement in which the only way out is to get out.  But Tigerland is after something slightly different in putting Bozz up against other facets of morality and the logical consequences of his own compassion.  There’s a lesson in leadership there, in reluctant responsibility and in the humanity to be found in even the most inhuman structures.  It helps that Tigerland’s dialogue are a notch over the average, and that the film feels gripping even though solely set during the training phase.  The film earned some critical notice upon release but practically no commercial success, thus qualifying for an evergreen “hidden gem” recommendation.  Never mind the often too-grainy cinematography and the impression that half the actors look like each other: This is a decent Vietnam picture, and it has a bit more than the usual in mind.

  • Defendor (2009)

    Defendor (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2011) Let’s face it: “Canadian Superhero film” sounds eccentric already. It’s not much of a surprise when Defendor ends up being a very unusual attempt to explore a more realistic take on the idea of a superhero: a mentally challenged loner who reinvents himself as a superhero in a crime-ridden city.  Billed as a comedy and containing a few genuinely funny moments, Defendor is nonetheless a fairly dark and unglamorous take on the superhero idea: There are no magical powers here, and the superhero fantasy itself is arguably laid bare as a coping mechanism by a mind unable to conceive of better alternatives.  (That it actually works may be the film’s lone concession to the demands of popular filmmaking.)  Nonetheless, the film itself is well-paced, and benefits from a superb performance by Woody Harrelson in the lead role.  Other notables such as Sandra Oh and Elias Koteas round up the cast, with a flashy cameo by Lisa Ray.  Where Defendor may end striking a wrong tone is in matters of expectations: There’s little conventional entertainment here, and the end of the film plays a bit loosely with the idea that it’s a comedy.  It’s a challenging film in its own way, and viewer’s expectations should be calibrated accordingly.

  • Fly Me to the Moon (2008)

    Fly Me to the Moon (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2011) As a life-long fan of the American Space Program, I’m amongst the most sympathetic of audiences when comes the time to see a kid’s film about the Apollo 11 moon mission.  Teenage flies going to the moon by sneaking onboard an Apollo capsule?  Well, why not: There are dumber premises out there and some of them are even titled Space Chimps.  In bits and pieces, Fly Me to the Moon works at portraying the adventure of the moon expeditions: The launch and landing sequences are nice pieces of work, a few scenes stop to breathe and play with the premise, the overall atmosphere is reverential, and Buzz Aldrin even pops up at the end to point out that no flies ever really accompanied them to the moon.  Alas, there’s the rest to consider: The scripting of the film is strictly aimed at the kids, with enough questionable plot choices to dull the edge of what could have been an adult-friendly picture.  The humour is dull, the dialogue is weak (while “Oh my Lord of the Flies!” is funny once, it doesn’t work a second time) and the plot threads barely make sense.  My appreciation of the film dropped like a stone the moment it introduced a subplot about Soviet spies: little about it made any sense, and I could have done without the introduction of fisticuffs, national rivalry and even more unanswered questions about why Soviet flies would be interested in bringing down an American mission.  The film does better when it’s about humankind-united exploration than zero-sum cheap nationalism.  (Never mind the blatant “American this, American that” content in a film made in Belgium.)  There’s a lot more to criticize, but all of it leads to the same place: Fly Me to the Moon is, at best, a bargain-basement choice for kids and a mere curiosity for space fans.

  • No Reservations (2007)

    No Reservations (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2011) A number of Hollywood cookie-cutter romantic films work on two levels: First, the plot engine is based on tried-and-true formula, with few surprises to offer.  Then there’s the wrapping in which the story takes place, which can focus on just about any area of human endeavour.  So it is that No Reservations is far more interesting when it describes the world of restaurant chefs and the personality quirks that come with a certain kind of hard-driven cooking professional than in the familiar story it’s trying to tell.  The dramatic and romantic entanglements are routine, but the glossy look behind the scenes of a kitchen is interesting, and the film doesn’t skimp on the small scenes that aim straight for the foodie audience.  Which is just as well, because a lot of the film’s plotting is made of short narrative loops suddenly resolved (whenever it remembers to advance the plot forward rather than show some fine cooking).  The main romantic conflict is late in coming and is over before we even realise it exists.  But for those who like food, No Reservations isn’t without interest: pure Hollywood gloss can serve some purpose when it’s focused on something delicious.  At least the actors do well: As a quasi-neurotic French cuisine perfectionist, Catherine Zeta-Jones is playing a somewhat different character than usual in one of her rare 2005-2011 roles, while Aaron Eckhart is pure charm as a quasi-slacker Italian cuisine chef.  It doesn’t amount to much of a movie, but it’s pleasant enough as a Hollywood take on the romance of cooking.  The DVD’s sole special feature is a TV special on the film that contains interesting material, but repeats itself often enough to grate and distract from the content.