Pillow Blog: My Top 10 Criterion Collection Films

The Criterion Collection hosts a series of Top 10 lists on its site, so notables can tell you all about their favourite films in the collection. I'm not famous. I'm not even ambitious. But here are mine anyway:

• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
• Mystery Train
• Beauty and the Beast
• Amarcord
• The Third Man
• The Last Days of Disco
• Crumb
• Ivan the Terrible Pt. I and II (cheating? perhaps.)
• My Man Godfrey
• Ran

Feel free to clip and save for the next time you're lost at the video store!

Book Covers I Have Loved: Algoma, Dani Couture

I have a mad crush on Invisible Publishing and their covers. It's a smaller Canadian publishing house, but I think their design work can easily stand with anything the big guys are putting out these days. For example, this lovely, stark cover for Dani Couture's Algoma. In spite of the unity of its colour palette, there's something unsettling about the whole. Maybe it's the shakiness of the font. All I know is that I want to order this. And Jonah Campbell's Food and Trembling. Actually, why not throw in this sinister cover for kevin mcpherson eckhoff's Forge and make it a triad? Judging from this Chronicle Herald story (worth reading just to have Invisible's founder, Robbie MacGregor, make you feel really lazy), design credit should go to Megan Fildes.

3D Printing and Winning

Greetings from bed, dear readers. One of the many ways I fail as a woman (blow dryers? how do they work?) is that I cannot handle one day - one fully day - of wearing heels without having to take a recovery day the next. This is how I imagine you better-disciplined folks feel after a spin class or a half-marathon. I feel your pain in pursuit or outfit consistency. In spite of my aching limbs, I did manage to make it to Autodesk this morning (a Saturday morning, for Christ's sake) for 10 am to take part in the Ladies Learning Code 3D Printing Workshop.

I had unfinished business with 3D printers. Back when I lived in Victoria, I went to the Makerspace's 3D printing workshop. I was the only girl. I tried to print a cube. And I somehow managed to break the Makerbot printing a cube in such a way that a piece of it went flying across the room, to punctuate my incompetence. I had to make things up to myself and my gender.

Success! An important step in equality has been made. It's hard to see - and I really should have held out for a printer loaded up with coloured plastic - but that's an octopus on a pendant. No machines were harmed in its production. The people at the workshop, particularly Matt Compeau and Bi-Ying Miao of Hot Pop Factory, were great and I couldn't have successfully made this without them. So sign up for a workshop and learn something new. Or even just to get even with the past.

Book Pile for April 4 (And Introducing the Best Book Club)

1. Trying to Fall Back in Love With Toronto Text: uTOpia: Towards a New Toronto, Edited by Jason McBride and Alanna Wilcox
2. Silly Little Thriller Book: Bulldog Drummond, Sapper
3. Serious Business NonFiction: Lenin's Tomb, David Remnick
4. Up With Science Tract: Bad Pharma, Ben Goldacre

This will be the last exciting book pile I'll post for at least a month and a half, because from now on I'll be reading one book. At least it's a book that's about as thick as all four of these put together. I'm finally tackling David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. I had a brief wave of genius pass over me, when I realized that the Best Book Club would, first, be flexible on how much of the month's book you had actually read, and second, feature booze. So I chose a book that would be almost impossible for anyone to finish. And I'm telling anyone who cares to join to bring two bottles of beer to my house next May. The bottles will go into a mystery bucket, and then the readers will blindly pick from the bucket, getting to try two new beers before we all babble about the book. I am, however, making Girl Guide-style badges for anyone who actually completes Infinite Jest, because that kind of accomplishment should not go unrecognized.

Action Movie Buddy Seeks Same

While casting about oh so fruitlessly on Facebook for someone - ANYONE - who would see the 80s action classic Miami Connection with me at TIFF, I came to a realization. My Toronto friends don't like action movies.

Which means I must not have any true Toronto friends at all... right? 

No, my friends are just too classy for me. Well, to solve this problem, I turned to the same place which had solved so many in the past. Or at least the place which helped me sell my old crockpot: Craigslist. In the "strictly platonic" section, I posted the following ad:

While I love all my friends dearly, these friends don't seem to love cult action movies. What? I know! Shameful. So I'm looking for people who would get as excited about screenings of They Live! and Miami Connection as I do. (Cross-posting to both genders, because ass-kicking knows no labels.)  

Since I chose the "strictly platonic" section, this naturally meant I was looking for the following type of reply:

You sound "A" OKee but the problem with you is your age. Basic data: I am single, white, born and raised in Europe, blond & blue eyed, 52 y.o.a., 5'11", clean shaven, no tattoos, no STDs, no smokes, no drugs. I am straight, "naturally dominant", mature, sane with a good sense of humour.

Oh yeah. The problem with me is my age. Instead of your age. And YOU. And oh, Craigslist. Where nothing is ever truly platonic. Not even, probably, the "for sale: rvs" section.

The Before Midnight Trailer

Some people like Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. And some other people are terrible, miserable human beings, whom you should not be friends with. It's a simple division. Since we can safely ignore the second group, here is some news which will interest the first: Before Midnight, the third film in the series, finally has a trailer.

Of course I'm as excited to see where Celine and Jesse are now, and what they'll talk about, as a fan waiting for Iron Man 3. However, I don't think Before Midnight can replace Before Sunrise in the fondest corner of my heart, just as Before Sunset was doomed to always be a distant second. In the first movie, Jesse and Celine, as young strangers, are so perfectly unguarded and unspoiled that you know it can only last for a moment. Because they still had their whole life to choose, there was no sadness at the cost of their choices - even if they made the right ones. Before Sunset was perfect but sad, because Jesse and Celine had clearly learned that life was not one long romantic night in Vienna. And as perfect as the movie was, it's harder to love something that's darker. Anyway, as an indication of how important these movies were to me, here's a story as I shared it on a friend's Facebook wall:

So, for some reason a post you commented on re. Before Midnight showed up on my news feed, which reminded me of a story. Back when I lived in Victoria, I was having a bad week and thought I would take an impromptu trip to Vancouver. My rough plan was to go without any commitments, meet some nice BC hero, and have a Before Sunrise-type gambol throughout the city. Instead I spent like 6 hours walking by myself through Vancouver's storage unit district and injured my knee. The closest I got to a genuine connection was the look I exchanged with a raccoon crawling out of the library's garbage can at 3 in the morning. WHERE'S MY MOVIE, LINKLATER???

The Family Porno: Stoker, Reviewed

If there's one thing I'm learning not to trust about movies, it's my own expectations. Hopes bite in the dark. Like Prometheus, which wasn't worth the effort I made to keep myself spoiler-free. Nor the cost of the ticket. Or even the TTC token I'm pretty sure I dropped in the theatre. 

More recently, Stoker let me down. The trailer had me all excited - Hitchcock crosses the Mason-Dixon line! - but the result was a hot mess, country-style. The plot is not unlike Shadow of a Doubt, though Mia Wasikowska's India Stoker is a far more sinister protagonist than Teresa Wright's Young Charlie. Still, they are both threatened by an Uncle Charlie. And though the solutions to their family difficulties are wildly different, their actions bring them both into their sexual maturity. Of course, this is less direct if we go back to the Hitchcock. Somewhat less shower masturbation, if I remember correctly. Because it's Park Chan-wook, there's sex. And in Stoker it teeters instead of balancing on the knife's edge of incest. However, it's not the sex which makes Stoker so silly. Needing to be either less or more stylized, to revel in its deep-fried absurdity or tone it down a little, what's on screen just looks awkward. You admire its ambitions. Even as you giggle at their results.

Pillow Blog: Small Pleasures

Another commentary-free list, this time of things which have made me feel content in the past few days. Gotta balance the consistent negativity of the last few posts.

1. Kraft Dinner
2. The fur on my cat's forehead
3. Having a cappuccino and a pastry between an appointment and work
4. The light in the Wychwood library branch
5. The smell of Earl Grey tea
6. Wearing handknit socks and leggings
7. Thinking of Trinity Bellwoods park in the summertime
8. Rediscovering my Sleater-Kinney CD
9. Two quilts on a cold night
10. Texts featuring my dog from my Dad

Pillow Blog: Irritation

A list of things that have irritated me today, as my tooth holes remain tender. Presented without commentary.

1. My cat
2. Amanda Palmer
3. TED talks
4. Ice cream
5. Me, for eating too much ice cream
6. My stomach, for not being able to hold too much ice cream
7. This guy
8. That guy
9. That other guy
10. Chamber music

Skate, Baby, Skate

Grace, beauty, strength, puffy shirts.

One of the great benefits of being doped up on Tylenol 3 this past week was an excuse to spend some quality time with sequins. The World Figure Skating Championships were on, which meant I was on the couch, considering the status of my favourite sport/art. Over the years my position on figure skating has mutated from outright contempt to secret shame and, finally, open support. It combines all of the things I love: athleticism... drama... headbands. It's opera with jumps, and ballet with blades.

It's also a sport that's having some problems.

In the '90s, skating seemed to have dug its toepicks into the fantasies of young women. But after a decade of judging scandals and North American talent lying fallow, things have changed. These championships were held in a minor league hockey arena, and skating revues are struggling not to close. As an interested observer, I'm wondering what the solution could be. Well, you can always pray that a spunky American girl can Cinderella-skate to gold, which would at least make a great movie. But part of a more reliable solution might be in fixing a fix - in other words, re-adjusting the scoring changes which were supposed to make the sport more objective. This seemed like a good idea, as I watched most of the men struggle through their free skate on Friday. Forced into throwing quads they couldn't land, which kept their points up but their spirits low, a few them looked like they would rather stab themselves in the neck with their skate than finish their routine. It's also difficult for audiences, who see clean skates score lower than trickier ones. If that fails, though, I recommend hiring whoever designed the Russian ice dancing costumes below to design all of the costumes from here to Sochi. Just think of the tie-in clothing deals you could run with H&M.