The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith’s Oscar-nominated documentary, tells the captivating story of an ultra-conservative hawk and war strategist turned whistleblower and dissident. This consistently absorbing depiction of Ellsberg’s fascinating life watches principles collide with the world of high politics. It documents the life and choices of a man whose change of heart made him “the most dangerous man in America.”

Formerly a marine, Ellsberg worked as a strategist at the conservative think-tank, RAND Corporation, where he helped plan and justify the American bombing campaign and subsequent military action in Vietnam. He was one of the war’s most enthusiastic supporters; that is, until he went to Vietnam himself where he lived and killed in the jungle with the grunts on the front line.

There he began to see the deceptions perpetuating an unwinnable war — the disconnect between the speeches on TV and the reality on the ground. Shortly after his tour, he was given access to a 7,000-page document that would come to be known as the Pentagon Papers: a history of American involvement in Vietnam since the end of World War Two. The Papers proved, beyond refute, that America fought more to save face than to help the Vietnamese and that the highest levels of government blatantly lied to the public on countless occasions.

Faced with a choice between remaining silent and exposing the documents, Ellsberg chose his principles over his career and leaked the Papers to the New York Times. What ensues is a riveting and complex narrative peppered with some of the biggest political names of the Vietnam years: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Kissinger, McNamara. The pace of the film never flags, following Ellsberg and his family as his actions begin to snowball, touching some of the most fraught events in American history since World War Two. The story moves with impressive force through the maze of names and events and keeps the audience absorbed until the final frame.

Don’t expect to be dazzled by the film’s beauty, though. Ehrlich and Goldsmith concentrate on truth-claim, and the cinematography remains flat and relatively unimaginative. The audience is left with the traditional documentary fare: interviews with Ellsberg, his wife, and his accomplices; Ellsberg’s slightly over-rehearsed narration; stills of himself in army fatigues, crawling through Vietnamese jungles; tape recordings of Nixon, complete with colourful expletives; many, many photos of men in suits and horn-rimmed glasses; and typically heart-wrenching found-footage from Vietnam.

At its most uninspired, the film cuts to low-lit re-enactment scenes where actors attempt to reproduce original events against a backdrop of ominous music, or to amateurish cartoons that depict the Ellsbergs photocopying classified documents at the RAND corporation. While the directors certainly intended to create tension with these scenes, the result is an aesthetic appeal equivalent to an episode of Cold Case or Mythbusters.

And yet, the story remains compelling, held aloft by ideals that have permeated North American culture to the very core — empathy, honesty, justice, peace — these are values incessantly espoused and seldom realized. The film works to unite these principles in one unapologetic man and to hold him up as an example to follow. The directors manage to accomplish this without drowning the film in a quagmire of cynicism and cognitive dissonance. Although the film documents, in great detail, the destruction wrought by the Vietnam War and the chilling deceit that made it possible, the viewer leaves the theatre feeling inspired rather than angry. Seeing how one man made a difference leads us back to our own potential — the fact that, somehow, someday, we might make a difference too.

The film was a nominee for an Academy Award in the best feature documentary category and is being shown at Cinema du Parc, 3575 Avenue du Parc.

So here’s the situation: a stranger comes to town and finds himself mysteriously drawn into somebody else’s life-in-progress. Meanwhile, a guy who’s dug in and married money discovers himself locked out of the house and his calls bounced. Kafka or farce? Peter Hinton’s Comedy of Errors pursues both options.

The place is Montreal, circa now, an urban street corner in Stephen Harper’s Canada. Helmeted police in bullet-proof vests stand on guard and, in case the smell of order puts you off, there’s a ceremonial Mountie for aesthetic relief. The amazing set (by Eo Sharp) is a vast shower of platinum squares that open revealing an elevator, a trendy bar, a bed. Music by Rufus Wainwright, scenario and dialogue by Shakespeare, this high-concept, high octane production features a splay of top Montreal talents. It’s imaginative and exhilarating, even if on opening night, not yet up to its own considerable ambitions.

On the page, the play is a dare: how silly can a story-line be and still be more than entertaining? Sometime in the past, identical twins, their parents and twin servants were separated during a shipwreck (one set on each shore). The mother took refuge in an abbey, dad went into trade. Now by chance, they are all thrown together just as the old man is about to be executed over unpaid debts. Dire circumstances bookend great mayhem, driven by the wonderfully manic twin servants, played by Debra Kirshenbaum and Danielle Desormeaux.

As the parents, Claire Coulter and Albert Millaire demonstrate what is meant by the old stage adage, there are no small parts. When Coulter in nun’s garb came out at the end to calm everybody down, I felt guilty for having had such a good time. When Millaire stepped forward to plead for his life, the pause before his sonorous appeal held the crowd breathless. If only a few more moments of such conviction could be found throughout.

Often modern dress Shakespeare seems like boiled sirloin: no matter how remarkable the result, there’s always a moment when you wonder why. Director Peter Hinton has answered the question by carefully defining the society of the play as stretched out tight to the point of snapping between licence and order – in other words, a lot like now.

Ephesus/Montreal is crawling with cops, but it is also revved up on recreational sex and driven to frenzy by omnipresent technology. Stephen Lawson’s camp turn as a cross-dressing courtesan stands in for a whole world of bling-happy denizens. The pace of life and an anything-is-possible mood help make multiple misunderstandings believable, and often very funny. Hearing Shakespeare in this context is of course a jolt, but eventually the language barrier pretty well disappears, and many lines sound oddly modern.

As an ensemble, the actors embrace their challenge with gusto and success. Andreas Apergis as the married brother comes closest to touching the play’s serious core. Suddenly shut out by his wife and betrayed by a faithful servant, his rage is neon green and hurting. Apergis plays on a wider keyboard than anyone else in the show. An earthy man-about-town caught up in a nightmare, he’s hilarious, heartbreaking, real.

By contrast, Marcel Jeannin as the stranger/brother embraces misunderstanding with insouciance. Mistaken by Adriana as her husband, he happily goes home to dinner; left alone with her lovely sister Luciana, he doesn’t hold back. As the sisters Adrianne and Luciana, Danette MacKay and Leni Parker are the cream on this stylish production, downtown babes with their own Holt Renfrew brand of street smarts.

The only problem is, they seem to be wearing each other’s clothes. Switched at birth? MacKay plays the wronged wife as a petulant vamp when in fact her role is the more nuanced and feeling of the two. The single sister is full of preachy advice about marriage, cynical and at least potentially loose, but Parker’s natural authority turns her into a formidable big sister. Thus confused, they miss their big moment, when Luciana must confess the wayward husband has hit on her – and she liked it.

Still, such picky reflections are only possible with work of a very high calibre. (As I chatted briefly with great francophone actor Albert Millaire after the performance, he mentioned this is only his second Shakespearean role in English, the first being Malvolio in Stratford Festival’s 1991 Twelfth Night. The electric jolt of those last two words produced a painful flashback: same play/same stage, directed by Centaur’s previous artistic director – mangled southern accents, horrific. How times have changed.)

A Centaur/NAC co-production set to move on to our nation’s capital after Montreal, this Comedy of Errors is an intelligent, enjoyable assault on a play that gives as good as it gets. If the thread of danger tightens up a notch, it will be excellent. Not to be missed.

The Comedy of Errors continues at Centaur Theatre until March 28. Box office: 514-288-3161. The acclaimed premier of Michel & ti-Jean has been extended to March 13.

Is it just me, or are Montreal theatre artists riding a new wave of excellence? The Montreal English Critics Circle Awards (MECCA) seems to indicate as much, with plays by Montreal writers Bruce M. Smith (at Infinitheatre) and Bryden MacDonald (Centaur) sweeping the awards announced on Monday.

Here’s a full list of nominees with WINNERS & DISTINCTIONS IN CAPS.

2008-2009 MECCA Nominations

Best Actor
ANDREAS ASPERGIS (BLESSED ARE THEY, INFINITHÉÂTRE)
Patrick Costello (Oooo!, SideMart Theatrical Grocery)
Barry Flatman (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Segal Centre for Performing Arts)
Dan Jeannotte (Cherry Docs, Persephone Productions)
Neil Napier (Hellavator, Hellavator Productions)

Best Actress
Stéphanie Breton (Trout Stanley, foundWave Theatre Co-operative)
NICOLA CAVENDISH (SHIRLEY VALENTINE, CENTAUR THEATRE)
Clare Coulter (Age of Arousal, Centaur Theatre)
Leni Parker (Age of Arousal, Centaur Theatre)
Brenda Robins (Doubt, Centaur Theatre)

Best Director
Frances Balenzano (Dracula, Fallen Angel Productions)
GREG KRAMER (CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, SEGAL CENTRE FOR PERFORMING ARTS)
Andrew Shaver (Oooo!, SideMart Theatrical Grocery)
Guy Sprung (Blessed Are They, Infinithéâtre)
Roy Surette and Bryden MacDonald (With Bated Breath, Centaur Theatre)

Best Text
Age of Arousal (Linda Griffiths)
WITH BATED BREATH (BRYDEN MACDONALD)
Blessed Are They (Bruce M. Smith)
Paradise Lost (Paul Van Dyck)
Truth and Treason (Rahul Varma)

Best Ensemble
Age of Arousal (Centaur Theatre)
Dracula (Fallen Angel Productions)
Life is a Dream (Scapegoat Carnivale)
Lion in the Streets (Tableau D’Hôte Theatre)
WITH BATED BREATH (CENTAUR THEATRE)

Best Visiting Production
Molora (Farber Foundry)
Reverie: Simply Unspeakable (Dexter Bullard/The Second City Theatricals, Just For Laughs)
Scorched (Tarragon Theatre)
This is What Happens Next (Necessary Angel)
TSHEPANG (ADAPTED AND DIRECTED BY LARA FOOT NEWTON, THÉÂTRE LA CHAPELLE)

Best Set Design
Perrine Biette (John and Béatrice, Infinithéâtre)
Michael Egan (Age of Arousal, Centaur Theatre)
JAMES LAVOIE (WITH BATED BREATH, CENTAUR THEATRE)
Eo Sharp (Buried Child, Segal Centre for Performing Arts/National Arts Centre)
Sarah Yaffe (Life is a Dream, Scapegoat Carnivale)

Best Costume Design
Michael Eagan (Age of Arousal, Centaur Theatre)
Astrid Janson and Sherri Catt (Tryst, Segal Centre for Performing Arts)
Amy Keith (Alice Through the Looking Glass, Geordie Productions)
MARIE-GENEVIÈVE MORIN (LE CODE NOIR, BLACK THEATRE WORKSHOP)
Jenna Wright (Life is a Dream, Scapegoat Carnivale)

Best Lighting
Jody Burkholder (Dracula, Fallen Angel Productions)
Jody Burkholder (Paradise Lost, Rabbit in a Hat Productions)
Jody Burkholder (Penumbra, Just for Laughs Zoofest and Rabbit in a Hat Productions)
SPIKE LYNE (WITH BATED BREATH, CENTAUR THEATRE)
Luc Prairie (Tryst, Segal Centre for Performing Arts)

Best Sound
Jesse Ash (Oooo!, SideMart Theatrical Grocery)
PETER CERONE (WITH BATED BREATH, CENTAUR THEATRE)
Lucie Monsarrat (Lion in the Streets, Tableau d’Hote Theatre)
Troy Slocum (Alice Through the Looking Glass, Geordie Productions)
Kevin Tighe (Dracula, Fallen Angel Productions)

Best Production
BLESSED ARE THEY (INFINITHÉÂTRE)
Doubt (Centaur Theatre)
Dracula (Fallen Angel Productions)
Factory Project (Studio 303 & Out Productions)
Tryst (Segal Centre for Performing Arts)

REVELATION PAUL VAN DYCK

DISTINCTION JEREMY HECHTMAN & PATRICK GODDARD (MAINLINE THEATRE)

For a lot of people, two types of writing are automatically considered opposites: either you read prefabricated made-for-Hollywood-production best-selling novels, or you read difficult elitist and intellectual novels. Over-generalization aside, we mustn’t forget there’s a huge middle ground between Dostoyevsky and Dan Brown. The ambassador for that middle territory should be DC Pierson, author of the delightfully entertaining The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To.

Darren Bennett is a very self-conscious and intelligent high school geek who spends a lot of time drawing and isn’t particularly popular at school. His brother’s a douche bag and his divorced father spends all his free time on the dating scene. Nothing fun is happening in his life until he meets Eric Lederer, a straightforward, possibly weird fellow student who is infatuated by Darren’s drawings and wants to collaborate with the young illustrator.

As nonchalantly as they can, the pair starts to develop a deep and honest friendship, one whose foundation rests upon the incredibly ambitious work of fiction they’re developing together. At one point, though, Eric Lederer admits to a big secret: he never sleeps. The adolescent boy is always awake. This revelation leads to a wonderful story involving drama class girls, hipsters, aggressive teenagers, absolutely evil villains and a special bond that can only be qualified as adorable between the two main protagonists. There’s even some sex.

This book is entertaining; you might even call it light reading. It’s got some clichés here and there, and it also ends up being a huge fanboy fantasy, but it’s also very heartwarming and true. It avoids predictability, its characters are believable, its dialogues hilarious and efficient, and its story original, interesting, and well crafted. The premise, the boy who can’t sleep, is impressive in its simplicity and beautiful in its execution.

This is DC Pierson’s first novel, and unlike some first books it’s not intent on showing off literary skills or settling scores. The quirky, first person adolescent geek narrative is dead on; it rings true and makes you laugh in all the right places, but it also makes you hurt. As with most coming-of-age stories, this one has a first love and also a first broken heart. Although you can spot that heartbreak coming a mile away, it is still heart-wrenching.

The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To is a universal story about friendship, love, and growing up quicker than you expected. But it is also pure candy for geeks, even grown-up ones. This novel is about the timid, intelligent, creative child, fan of science fiction and superhero stories, who was labeled a geek when it was still an insult.

The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To is a great homage to geekdom as well as an original story told in a beautiful way.

Joseph Elfassi is a Montréal based photographer, writer and journalist. For articles, pictures and videos, go to www.elfassi.ca.

André Gagnon’s opera Nelligan premiered in 1990 at the Grand Theatre de Québec with a pop cast. On Saturday, the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal reprised it, twenty years on, at the Monument National. A more ambitious production than anything the Opéra de Montréal has dared at Place des Arts, it is full of talented young singers and features local tenor stalwart Marc Hervieux as insurance.

The experience was electric and confusing, like breakfast with Tesla: evidence that opera is alive and a sign that something is the matter with it. Nelligan is a romantic embalming whose libretto (by Michel Tremblay) could have been written in 1899, the year the poet had his breakdown. It makes a poor argument for the relevance of the art. A contemporary opera is more than updated music; it is a rethinking of the form.

The revival should have been an opportunity for much-needed renewal, a reading to bring out contradictions that don’t fit into the myth of artistic martyrdom. This Émile is just one of “two poor wet cats on the way to the slaughterhouse,” as Tremblay puts it.

Myths usually serve some purpose. Though Nelligan’s ideology is unclear, it leans to moralistic determinism: Émile must ‘die’ because he is a great poet. His mother must ‘die’ in giving him up. His father must ‘die’ a slave to his Irishness. Minor characters like Father Seers and Françoise resonate somebody else’s ideas, and only promising performances by baritone Pierre Rancourt and mezzo-soprano Catherine Daniel gave them any life.

Old Nelligan did not seem much work for Hervieux, who often stood and watched the cast time travel, a cinematic trick that struggled through the river of syrup oozing from the pit. Two pianos lounged next to a cello salvaged from the Titanic and made beautiful music, though at times I admit I found it difficult. As I meditated on Tremblay’s words, the melodies seemed like leaden ingots flying molten from the keys on sapphire wings, striking my heart with golden daggers of sound, poisoning me, until I wondered whether so much feeling wasn’t fattening. I had invited my doctor (it is the only time I can get an appointment), and she assured me that I would be fine because I am a true critic.

The evening had two stars: Dominique Côté was energetic and bold as Young Nelligan, and Caroline Bleau was lucid and warm as his mother. Bleau managed to break through the sentimental fog and arrive at song we could trust, which was the night’s greatest achievement.

You could write an essay on lullaby forms in Nelligan, but I don’t recommend it. Try to think instead about the challenge of this opera, which attempts to distill a brief and laden life together with decades of its cultural importance. A life that asked about the role of art in the modern world; whether one can belong to two cultures; and will French survive in the face of continental English?

These are relevant questions – so let’s have some relevant opera about them.

Nelligan, Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal at Monument National, 1182 St-Laurent. Tonight, March 10th, and 11th at 20h00, March 13th at 14h. Tickets 514 842-2112.

Lev Bratishenko is a researcher at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. He is in very good health.

Fifty-four periodicals submitted their 2008 issues to A.F. Moritz, editor of this second poetry anthology in the Best Canadian series. When Moritz was awarded the 2009 Griffin prize, the judges’ citation referred to “his formal grace”—an aesthetic which clearly underlies his choices. Of the magazines known for publishing edgier work, only PRECIPICe even makes the long list of also-rans. Yet any collection of poems must, perforce, submit to the editor’s idea of excellence, and in this type of anthology, twice-vetted.

Moritz’s introduction, “Canadian Poetry Today,” is 17 pages long. Thus he has room to go beyond introducing the poems in the book and muses on poetry itself, using as springboard Dave Margoshes’s “Becoming a Writer,” with authorizing quotations from Octavio Paz and Czeslaw Milosz. When he does eventually talk about The Best Canadian Poetry, he comments, “you will see as you read the poems of this anthology that its [Canadian poetry] adventures are multiple.” If poems outside Moritz’s personal aesthetic are understandably absent, the chosen fifty, presented alphabetically from Atwood to Zwicky, are in no way devoid of delights, and my notes record many remarkable moments.

Form itself has a presence: the late P.K. Page’s “Coal and Roses: A Triple Glosa”; ballads by Anita Lahey and Matt Rader; prose poems by Eric Miller, Meredith Quartermain and Matthew Tierney. There is pastiche, as echoes of Revelations brilliantly structure John Terpstra’s “The Highway That Became a Footpath”—even to its biblically-cadenced redundancies.

And the highway-that-became-a-footpath
led past the longhouse raised
during the same resistance, down in the valley,
for it still existed (both longhouse and valley existed
still)
and other longhouses

Canada is many places, from Evelyn Lau’s “Night Market” in Richmond, BC, to Ken Babcock’s “Donkey Sanctuary” near Guelph, ON. There are also poems that speak of elsewhere—David O’Meara’s “Café in Bodrum,” Cora Siré’s “Before Leaving Hué,” and Changmin Yuan’s “Chinese Chimes: Nine Detours of the Yellow River”—whose “song is no more than a foam of silence[.]” Place is also found in the elsewhen—Carmine Starnino in ancient Rome with “Pugnax Gives Notice”; and the (re)constructed reminiscence of a more recent past in Ricardo Sternberg’s account of love on a commune, “New Canaan,” in which the persona had to meditate before breakfast, and “his loquacious stomach growled/ in such long, drawn out sentences/ he took to calling it Cicero[.]”

In a section called “Poem Notes & Commentaries,” readers are provided with insights on how the poems came to be. Anne Compton’s “Even Now” considers aging. It was prompted, she explains, by her three-year-old grandson’s question, “Granny Anne, are you old?” Such explanations are useful to students of poetry, because they will learn that a poem’s trigger does not have to be in the poem itself. But can be, as in Robyn Sarah’s “Echoes in November” which concludes with its inspiration, “the ghost of a rose/ in the core of a carrot.”

Maxianne Berger is the author of Dismantled Secrets (Wolsak and Wynn, 2008).

Director Kathryn Bigelow is into metaphors big time. The Hurt Locker, her Oscar-worthy film’s title, can mean any number of things – a dangerous physical space, or a wounding of the mind. It might also refer to what Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) keeps in his foot locker – the detonators he’s risked life and limb to dismantle from bombs buried in everything from dirt roads to human flesh.

It’s all in his day’s work, protecting Baghdad’s civilians and military personnel. In bygone eras, warriors collected scalps; ironically, both kinds of talismans represent personal achievement.

Though Bigelow’s celluloid vision is minimalist – as opposed to ex-husband James Cameron’s grandiosity – it is nevertheless probing, effective and richly eloquent. Her less-is-more quasi-documentary approach works in this gem which, while insanely tense and troubling, runs contrary to every cliché we have come to expect from war films.

There are no politics, no “axis-of-evil” enemies, and none of the terrorizing and blood-and-guts torture you find in masterpieces like Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, or Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter. Neither is there over-the-top madness à la Francis Ford Coppolla’s Apocalypse Now.

Instead, thanks to the real-life experiences of screenwriter Mark Boal, the film focusses tightly on a special bomb squad operating in and around Baghdad. Precision timing and nerves of steel coupled with grace under pressure comprise the unit’s job requirements. There is no room for recklessness in any member of the team. At least, that’s the way it’s been until the group’s head man gets killed on the job.

Enter maverick Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) who crosses the line too often to suit operational leader Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie)’s more pragmatic, cautionary approach. James relies on Sanborn to help him in and out of his special suit and to cover his back with other team members while he single-handedly risks complete exposure. James knows full well that civilian onlookers, some draped out of windows, others peering down at him from minarets, might invariably be the same people who planted the bombs in the first place.

Sanborn thinks James is foolhardy; he resents his cavalier attitude, his insistence on defying protocol when it could well cost the lives of the entire team. Nevertheless, there is also a feeling of grudging respect – if not awe – for the sheer talent of this latest bomb dismantler and certainly, audiences feel the same way. We are swept into the cyclical nature of the team’s daily rotation, and remain on the edge of our seats with each new attempt to beat the clock and stay alive.

The film’s opening quote: “War is a drug” has everything to do with the adrenaline rush one gets when defying death. We readily appreciate how James has become addicted, despite grotesque experiences. After all, he is not just good at what he does, he’s masterful.

As the number of days left to the unit’s rotation winds down, there is talk about a future back home. The question is, if James survives, how will he deal with it?

In retrospect, NBC’s decision to replace its entire 10 o’clock drama line-up by a daily Jay Leno Show was not only ill-advised, it was suicidal. For a simple but irresistible reason: on an occasional basis, viewers may prefer to spend easy time with talk show hosts and glamorous guests – but, in the long run, they would rather commit to lasting relationships with well-written and well-produced fiction.

NBC’s announcement last spring that Jay Leno would leave the Tonight Show to Conan O’Brien had been expected, but the second part of the deal – the 10 pm time lost, came as a shocker. It seemed obvious that, being in very bad shape, the Peacock Network had chosen a cheaper, if drastic, solution to fill its primetime schedule.

High-quality storytelling is, for sure, much more expensive than topical one-liners and promotional line-ups. Still, for reasons I hope to elaborate in future contributions to this site, executives should know that fiction remains much more appealing to the public than any other kind of programming. Even though American Idol has been the number one program on American TV this season, 12 of the top 20 shows are scripted dramas or comedies. And this has been going on for a long time.

Since the early days of American Television, the 10 p.m. slot has always been the host of high-quality, demanding, gritty dramas (Remember the 12-year run of NYPD Blue on ABC?), attracting high-income audiences targeted by very specific sponsors.

It the early 80’s, NBC’s groundbreaking Hill Street Blues started what television’s historian and critic Robert J. Thompson aptly called “Television’s Second Golden Age”. The Peacock went on to become the top US Network for two decades. Its reign ended in the early 2000’s when signature shows such as Friends and Frasier finally bowed and the once worldwide number one drama, ER, was replaced in the audience’s heart by CBS’s juggernaut CSI franchise and by less celebrated but brilliant dramas such as Cold Case and Without a Trace.

As any sensible observer of American Television could have predicted, a sizeable number of the demanding 10 p.m. audience didn’t watch Leno. Significantly, NBC’s aging but still high-rated moneymaking show Law & Order : Special Victims Unit lost a considerable share of its viewers after it was displaced from the Wednesday, 10. p.m. slot. Its audience flipped to other networks. And they had a lot to choose from.

For drama and comedy have never fared better, in number and in quality, than they nowadays do on both the networks and cable channels. Starting in the early 90’s, cable leader HBO was first to air bold, innovative dramas and single camera comedies which threatened the networks’ domination. The Larry Sanders Show, Dream On! and Oz were on the air long before The Sopranos and Curb Your Enthusiasm started to garner Emmys. In the past five years, other cable channels have started producing their own dramas and comedies. While HBO’s influence has somewhat declined, Showtime, FX, SciFi, TNT, AMC, the NBC-owned USA, Starz and others now air critically-acclaimed shows (including Damages, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Men of a Certain Age and the very recent and impressive Spartacus : Blood and Sand) which attract a growing number of watchers away from the networks’ regular scheduling.

“NBC’s 10 p.m. Jay Leno debacle has been good for CBS,” said Eye entertainment prexy Nina Tassler to the press, in early January 2010. It has, indeed! Except for the 2007-2008 season, led by Fox, CBS had been ruling as America’s top network for almost ten years now. At this time, it still rules, with a solid prime-time schedule composed of a dozen (mostly) procedural dramas and half as many very successful comedies. Significant is the fact that CBS airs only three reality shows in its prime time schedule. Only fifteen years ago, the rising Reality TV fad had been labelled and libelled as the future killer of scripted shows. As anyone can tell, scripted shows are still alive and well.

Even more significant is the fact that, in the past five years, the DVD industry has met a drastic change: movies are not the buyers’ favourite choice anymore. A growing number of TV’s comedies and dramas, including decades-old ones such as I Love Lucy or Marcus Wellby, M.D. are currently re-issued in boxed-set DVDs and Blue-Rays and meet with a growing success.

One might believe that NBC would have known that in the first place. Cancelling their Leno at 10 experiment indicates they’ve finally came to their senses. And Look who’s back! According to the very well informed The futoncritic.com, in early January NBC extended its episode order for five of its scripted shows, including Law & Order : SVU (which will be back, after the Olympics, in its former 10 p. m. slot) and the 21-year-old but still kicking and more topical and provocative than ever Law & Order.

Welcome back, Drama!

Marc Zaffran is a researcher and doctor. He has edited and co-written a dozen books on TV drama. His essay “Mr. Monk Meets Dr. House” will be published in Monk and Philosophy.

La fuite a lieu lorsque l’on ne peut ou ne veut plus lutter contre la réalité. Selon Henri Laborit dans L’éloge de la fuite, nous pouvons fuir de différentes façons : les drogues, la psychose, le suicide, la solitude ou l’imaginaire, mais comment peut-on continuer à fuir lorsqu’on est confronté par les méfaits de cette fuite?

François Dubé (Benoît McGinnis) se rend chez ses parents à Victoriaville pour amener son père Denis (Michel Dumont) à la Maison Jean Lapointe à Montréal. Arrivé, il retrouve son père, saoul, cachant sa bière derrière la poubelle, qui lui parle de la chaleur de l’été et qui ne répond pas aux questions de son fils qui cherche à comprendre pourquoi il a tant besoin de fuir. Claire (Louison Danis), la mère de François, n’a plus la force d’aider Denis et compte sur son fils, mais lorsqu’un drame survient, François découvre que sa mère aussi fuyait à sa manière et qu’il doit l’aider comme il a voulu aider son père. Fruit de son enfance, François ne peut fuir à son tour les déceptions et les frustrations qu’il relate entre les scènes. Il doit devenir le parent de ses parents.

Excuse-moi de Serge Boucher est la troisième pièce racontant l’histoire des Dubé après 24 Poses (Portraits) et Là. Mise en scène par René Richard Cyr, la pièce regroupe tant de talent — du dramaturge aux acteurs en passant par le décorateur, l’éclaireur, etc. — qu’on n’y trouve rien à redire et surtout rien à excuser. Dès les premières paroles, à la fois dites et non dites, Boucher capte notre attention et ne lâche pas prise. Autant Une maison face au nord de Jean-Rock Gaudreault, présentée au Théâtre Jean Duceppe plus tôt dans la saison, représentait le quotidien d’une façon qui n’engageait pas le spectateur, autant Excuse-moi représente ce même quotidien avec une émotion à fleur de peau et une pointe d’humour qui font en sorte qu’on ne veuille plus laisser ces personnages touchants et attachants.

L’utilisation de La violètera (version Charles Chaplin) comme leitmotiv musical est un choix astucieux qui consolide à la fois le pathos de la pièce tout en rappelant le côté optimiste de Charlot. De même, les décors sont ingénieux, illustrant la sphère du père et la sphère de la mère, qui existent simultanément, mais qui ne se touchent pas, ainsi que les limbes dans lesquels se retrouve François.

Une pièce solide, dont tous les aspects sont irréprochables, Excuse-moi est à voir absolument. Il est à espérer que le Théâtre Jean Duceppe remette en scène 24 Poses (Portraits) et Là (originalement présentée lors des saisons 2001–2002 et 2006–2007 respectivement) en conservant les mêmes acteurs, afin de donner à ceux qui n’ont pas eu la chance de voir les présentations originales l’occasion de découvrir d’autres aspects de la famille Dubé.

Excuse-moi joue au Théâtre Jean Duceppe jusqu’au 27 mars.

Since the beginning of February, poet/spoken-word artist Möe Clark has been performing and collaborating in an unusual venue: Westmount High. She is the Poet-in-Residence there, working with students on their own pieces and performances, teaching them what it means to be an artist and introducing them to the tools of the trade.

The program, a collaboration between the Foundation for Public Poetry, Westmount High School and the school’s Alumnae Association, has had great results. According to Westmount High English teacher Ryan Ruddick: “She’s really inspired the school, let the teachers know what spoken word is and inspired the kids who thought that poetry was for someone else.”

Clark, not the first person who comes to mind when one thinks “poet,” was seen as the best fit for the job because she has a contemporary, inter-disciplinary style that combines elements of hip hop, jazz and political spoken word poetry. It’s a style that really hits home with the students already well versed in spoken-word forms and hip hop culture.

The Poet-In-Residence program is allowing both students and the artist an opportunity to explore performance and the spoken word. For the duration of her tenure at Westmount High, Clark has teamed up with the school’s Hip Hop and Spoken Word Collective and a few other interested and dedicated students. They meet twice a week to work on the students’ poetry and performances.

For Clark it’s about sharing her own creative process of writing, editing, rehearsing, recording and performance with the students. She gives them feedback and is teaching them how to use looping pedals and recording technology. “It’s really amazing to see how talented they are! They’re listening, they’re aware” – and they are stepping up.

“There’s this one kid Daniel who’s writing a piece a week – really coming out with stuff,” Clark says with enthusiasm. “He’s inspired by hip hop but finding ways to fuse it with his own story. He came in one day: ‘Miss! Miss! I have this idea…’” It quickly became a collaborative effort. “He played the Biggie Small’s (The Notorious B.I.G.) riff that inspired him and so we made a loop of that, and this other kid started doing a beat box. Before you know it he’s standing up at the podium performing his work.”

According to Clark this is really about giving them the tools and, more than just learning about looping stations and recording technology, this includes the study of the mechanics and conventions of poetry: alliteration and rhymes, the way that words and sounds make their own music. Clark says the experience has been a breath of fresh air. “I get to expose them to contemporary forms. I let the teachers teach them about Shakespeare.”

For Clark this is an opportunity not only to work on an on-going basis with the students of Westmount High but gives her the chance and space to work on her own performance and poetry. They’ve given her a desk in the basement and the residency gives her financial support so that she can work on her own performance art. She will be performing on March 13th at the MAI Interdisciplinary Levier on Art and the Economies of Exploitation: How Many Slaves Do You Own? as part of the three-day event.

The entire program has been funded by the Foundation for Public Poetry and the efforts of Jack Locke, the organization’s Poet-in-Chief. The project was conceived last April as a way to celebrate the 75th birthday of Westmount High’s most prestigious poet alumnus: Leonard Cohen. Funds were raised through the sale of the Foundation’s recently published book “Leonard Cohen You’re Our Man” in which 75 poets from 12 countries submitted work in honour of Leonard Cohen. The book was published thanks to a Friesen’s Corporation sponsorship and is available on line at: www.public.wordpress.com and at Diamond Bookstore on Sherbrooke St.

Check out Möe Clark doing her thing on YouTube.

Not to be missed at the MainLine Theatre is a musical comedy reimagining the Greek god of wine, Dionysus, in middle age. With text and lyrics by Jeremy Hechtman and Patrick Goddard, inspired by a story of Garrison Keillor, this is smartly written comedy delivered with great timing by a well-rehearsed and able cast.

There are fabulous original songs with music by Nick Carpenter, and the large ensemble delivers some fine harmonies with their bawdy lyrics and sarcastic expressions.

In a wonderful opening act, Dionysus, played with spirit and joy by Paul Van Dyck, reminds us of the pleasures of wine, women and song. Lovely nymphs sing silly songs, and the god feeds the audience grapes off his loin bunch. However, The Mid-life Crisis of Dionysus soon takes a fateful turn. Dionysus, associated through the ages with revelry and indulgence, finds that middle age has caught up with him. His wife is nagging him about his drinking, his doctor needs to do more tests and things anatomical just aren’t working the way they used to. Van Dyck commands the stage and, while he looks a bit young for the pathos of aging, his presence brings the audience along on the journey.

Excellent direction by co-author Hechtman turns the ribald details of man’s decline into brilliantly choreographed stage comedy. Dionysus on a hospital gurney with attendants rushing about amid concern for his failing virility; or at the dinner table with the wife, politely negotiating just another drop of wine, while male and female choruses volley the frustrations of moderation and compromise — “jerk!” “bitch!” prick!” “pussy!” These high-energy numbers are spectacular farce – original, uproarious and integrated perfectly into the story. Other song and dance numbers are reminiscent of old Hollywood musicals (replete with old-fashion dance-girl costumes or other splendid touches in wardrobe by Lindsay Wesbrook), Frank Sinatra skits, or rock and roll history.

Goddard performs well as the chorus leader and the cast moves well from comic skit to chorus song. Eleanor Young and Vance de Waele add standout flourishes, stepping out from the chorus and into over-the-top characters, among many bright moments. The mortality-play story of aging is not lost in the theatrics, although its twists and turns are not always compelling. The show is moved along by music and song and an abundance of good humour.

Mid-life is an ambitious offering and it succeeds by many accounts. It is equal parts music, song, story and language, and all are capably presented. The musical score includes a wide variety of sound from rock and roll to klezmer. The music is very good and the musicians feed the songs and stage-play well without taking over. While the lyrics are often silly, the singers perform them admirably, moving all the while. A couple of songs fall flat, but these are dwarfed by the success of so many others.

In fact, with so many jokes and so much song, the show would have benefited from a bit of editing. The authors have packed the experience with layers of humour, history and sound. They may be guilty of overdoing it. But then with Dionysus in the house, you can hardly expect moderation to come easily.

The Mid-life Crisis of Dionysus is at the MainLine Theatre through March 6, 2010. For details and tickets go to the MainLine site.

Mulling over David Mamet’s Three Uses of the Knife while watching the 2010 Olympics, I was reminded of why sports competitions have enjoyed such an important role in the history of western civilization, because sport obeys dramatic principles. Or is it vice versa?

If this galvanizing event we’ve just witnessed does turn out to be – as some predict – a defining moment for Canada, the cause surely lies somewhere outside the issue of how many medals “we” won. It isn’t, in the end, about the medals.

Sure, winning is great. It makes the play a comedy in the technical sense of ending happily, gives rise to exuberant celebration, and is certainly better than losing. The CTV cameras lingered on the faces of defeated American players for an excruciatingly long time. They were devastated – a word the Sunday New York Times used to describe how Canada would feel, if our team should lose.

Losing throws the competitor into despair, and afterwards, gives rise to soul searching. But the truth is, several excellent Canadian athletes failed to win the medals they deserved and could have won, had fate or the wind gone their way in the crucial five or ten seconds between one rank and the next. The ever-present element of chance in competition is one of the main sources of excitement. It is the god element. The game of hockey is incredibly fast and all the players outstanding, but both teams are shadowed by the invisible, a death-like presence hovering over play, outside anyone’s control.

What made these games so absorbing for me, someone who normally gives sports a pass, (except when I was courting a Welshman, then boy did I get interested in rugby) was the stunning three-act structure of the entire two-week event, the bigger game, day-by-day, how are we doing? To be honest, I spent far more time reading about the games in various publications that land on our doorstep and are accessible on the web than I did in front of the TV. Sure, I saw the highpoints. I tuned in long enough to get sick of those talking car ads and other inanities. (“Some people call it B.C. We call it home.” Dah. That would be because you live there, we don’t.)

But mostly I read what my favourite writers had to say, an exercise that revealed just how thorough is the connection between national stature, national pride and certain august writers’ critical sensibility. Here’s what Nancy Franklin (New Yorker TV writer) had to say in the March 1 issue (printed mid-way through the games): “Vancouver won’t be remembered as a great Games; it will be remembered for the senseless death that occurred before the competition even began. Each night, NBC showed the medal counts of the leading countries – a list “sponsored” by McDonald’s – and the exercise seemed jarring, the numbers meaningless in the face of Kumaratashvili’s death. As much as I love the Olympics, these Games can’t be over soon enough.” Dead and buried at intermission? As F. Scott Fitzgerald was moved to say, American lives have no second act. Short attention span or what?

To dismiss a neighbour’s party mid-way through by lingering on a freak accident is to reveal a variety of snobbery that says far more about the Empire’s wounded pride than the neighbour it seeks to demean. I couldn’t help but detect in this piece, and in so much of that was written by the British and American press, that by daring to declare an intent to win, Canada was cast as the younger brother, criticized and ridiculed for stepping into the limelight.

Act Three. The protagonist takes many falls but remains calm and confident and somehow triumphs, hours before the whole show ends.

In the flush of Team Canada goal’s winning goal, one announcer declared: “A nation is relieved”. How Canadian. How modest. I hope we don’t change. I just hope we do go on winning.

The delicate balance between disquisition and narrative spontaneity has long been a source of lively debate in literary circles. The most famous argument on this theme might be Henry James’ critique of George Eliot’s writing style. James, no slouch when it came to philosophical musings in his own work, found Eliot’s brilliant novels weighted down by too much reflection and not enough action.

Perhaps there is some consolation for Johanna Skibsrud in being in good company. She might also feel proud of her book’s beauty as a physical object. Gaspereau Press produces lovely hand-sewn paperbacks printed on their own printing press, using wonderful heavy gauge textured paper. Unfortunately that’s as far as the consolation goes, because her first novel (following a successful collection of poetry), suffers from an extreme case of overstrain in the disquisition department. There are poignant images scattered throughout the two hundred and sixteen pages of this novel, birds with hearts nailed to their chests and ghostly memories entangled among the relics of a submerged town. But that is not enough to sustain the reader, who is left to discern the meaning behind a stream of endless sentences full of abstract musings on the absence of emotion and the ephemeral quality of this or that reality.

Ironically, Skibsrud seems to have insight into the problem of generalizations within the contextual intimacy of a novel; her protagonist states, “[it] is only from a distance that abstractions are, after all, desirable, or even possible.”

The heart of The Sentimentalists is not Skibsrud’s nameless narrator’s esoteric contemplation of the meaning of life and love. Nor is it the story of her father Napoleon’s unfinished boat The Petrel that drifts unpredictably in and out of the novel, providing opportunities to use lots of marine imagery. The heart of this novel, the content that has the potential to draw to reader into its savage, bloody, and ultimately tragic core, is the story of Napoleon, what happened to him during his time serving as a soldier for the Americans during the Vietnam War, and how that experience shaped his future self.

After sixty-eight pages of heavy going, the character Henry takes centre stage. He repeats many of the details we already know, but manages at least to displace the first person narrator and engage the reader by describing the multi-generational turmoil leading up to the flooding of a small Ontario town by the local power company. Here too we learn more about Owen, Henry’s dead son and a wartime buddy of Napoleon, the narrator’s irascible, alcoholic, chain-smoking dreamer of a father. But then, just as the story seems to be finally rolling along, Skibsrud pulls the reader out of the action with a confusing timeline (“That night” is actually a week later), a third person subjective narrator who seems to be able to read other characters’ thoughts (Henry tells us how a megaphone felt in Owen’s hand and that Owen’s grandfather left a steadying hand on his grandson’s shoulder, “Unaware that he did so….”). We are also distracted by the frequent interpolation of first person narration that breaks up Henry’s story with a less than confident voice that includes many “I guesses,” “it seemeds,” and “I thoughts.”

The writer appears to understand her essential literary challenge when she writes, “[it's] funny isn’t it? The way we always position ourselves at that centre of our own stories.” Skibsrud drew heavily on the actual wartime experience of her late father when writing her first novel. She would have done well to let her father, or his fictional counterpart, take control of the story instead of confusing us with the unsure ruminations of a narrator with no name.

B.A. Markus is a writer, musician, and mother living in Montreal.

Along with disaster movies of the 1970s and all-night bowling alleys, strange little books are one of life’s great pleasures. Just such a creation is The Olive and the Dawn, a slim short story collection by Montreal author Ian Orti.

Dreamlike in tone, Orti’s work is at once odd and humorous. Linear time is insignificant; the future and the past weave their way in and out of the narrative along with alternative endings found in stories called, aptly, “Epilogue,” “Last Call,” and “Postscript.” The Olive is the common thread, a character who appears in the majority of the stories wearing a myriad of different hats; we see him as a horny tennis hopeful, a gallant bicycle thief, a frostbitten drunk. Whatever his incarnation, the Olive is a romantic. His great love is the Dawn, and though we hear of her more often than see her, she is the driving force behind the Olive’s tumultuous life.

The highlight of the book is “And Then the Disco Came to Ecuador.” Told in fairytale fashion, this story mixes a rousing cocktail of teen longing, sibling loyalty, and disco dancing. This could be an alternate universe Sound of Music, the drape-clad von Trapp children trading in mountaintop sessions of “Do-Re-Mi” for sweat, hips, and “music loud enough to drown speech in its own futility.” It’s impossible to resist rooting for six brothers and sisters with the common and admirable goal of sneaking out of the house in the night to join the boogieing throng beneath “the mirrored cubes of Ecuador’s first disco ball.” You’ll want to read this story quietly, to keep from waking their parents.

Ian Orti does things that the most bumptious member of your writers’ critique group will tell you not to do. He addresses the reader directly. He reveals the future, repeatedly. He spends a paragraph on a detailed restaurant breakfast scene only to follow up with “But this wasn’t actually how it happened.” Your clever friend would ask, in the living room, food court café, or wherever it is that you meet every two weeks to pick apart each other’s work: If that wasn’t how it happened, why bother writing it? Because, you might want to answer for the author, if there is no risk involved in the act, why bother writing at all?

Now I’m going to imagine ideal readers for The Olive and the Dawn. The first three that come to mind are:

1. A dude with a red goatee who works at the video store nobody goes to anymore.

2. A 26-year old CÉGEP English teacher who’s anxious about a course on Roman mythology she got stuck teaching this semester even though she knows precious little about the subject.

3. A guy who has tapes dating back to 1989 of himself calling radio talk shows. He goes by the alias “Ron in Chomedey.”

And, like you, all three every now and then enjoy old disaster movies and bowling after midnight.

Mark Paterson is the 2009 winner of Geist magazine’s Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest. Author of the short story collections A Finely Tuned Apathy Machine and Other People’s Showers, Mark is currently writing a novel, With the Lights Out.

Sure, award ceremonies are cheesy. But, when you’re in the thick of things, they can also feel exciting. They can become a bringing-together of community. A validation of community, even. There’s no question that, in North American culture, one award ceremony trumps all others in the popular imagination. The annual televised Oscar ceremony has become a shared ritual of religious proportions, even for many who deride it for aesthetic, political, or whatever other reasons.

Most years, although I try to see as many new films as I can, I end up not having seen most of the Oscar nominees. They’re rarely the sort of thing I’m interested in, tending as they do toward bloated mega-productions displaying money rather than talent, sentimental pap, romanticized biopics, heavy-handed screeds, or meandering melodramas with postcard cinematography.

And yet, I often watch the Oscars anyway. It’s the only awards show I ever watch. There’s something mythic about, in spite of and maybe even because of all the pomp and tackiness.

I’ll fess up now to the Oscar contenders I didn’t see. Avatar. The Hurt Locker. The Blind Side. An Education. Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire. The Messenger. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Crazy Heart. Invictus. The Lovely Bones. Nine. Julie & Julia. Coraline. The Secret of Kells. The Princess and the Frog. The Young Victoria. Some of these films are probably very good. But, good or bad, most of these didn’t interest me enough to see. A few I missed, despite being somewhat curious about them.

Anyway, this year I ended up seeing 26 new films. This week on my Rover blog, tapping into the Oscar buzz and gearing up for the big night (Sunday, 7 March), I’ll be discussing those 26 films I did see. I’ll bemoan the ones that disappointed me the most (Monday). I’ll marvel at the most outstanding performances (Tuesday). I’ll remember the scenes that etched themselves most profoundly in my imagination (Wednesday). I’ll examine the genre that dominated the year (Thursday). And finally, in a nod to the Oscars’ newly expanded list of nominees for Best Motion Picture, I’ll pick my top 10 films of 2009 (Friday).

So, you may ask, if I didn’t see all those films I listed above, what did I see? I’ll leave you with my full list – winners and stinkers – but without comment. Check back on my Rover blog for what I have to say about them.
• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
• The Brothers Bloom
• District 9
• Duplicity
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
• In the Electric Mist
• In the Loop
• Inglourious Basterds
• The International
• The Invention of Lying
• Jennifer’s Body
• The Men Who Stare at Goats
• Moon
• 9
• One More Week
• The Road
• A Serious Man
• Sherlock Holmes
• A Single Man
• Star Trek
• Sunshine Cleaners
• Up
• Up in the Air
• Watchmen
• Zombieland

Be sure to tune in to Claude’s blog next week for a daily dose of pre-Oscar fever.

In-the-know North American audiences do not miss an opportunity to see a Meg Stuart work, and her latest Do Animals Cry reminds why. Making their first Montreal appearance in over four years, Stuart’s Belgium-based company Damaged Goods goes to the volatile core of private family life to wrestle out two hours of visceral, unruly physical theatre.

Based since 1994 in Brussels, American choreographer Meg Stuart’s collaborative, genre-eclipsing performance works have made her a key ringleader of Europe’s dance avant garde. Do Animals Cry, created in 2009, finds her teaming up again with two of her favourite collaborators, German stage designer Doris Dziersk and New York-based composer Hahn Rowe, who contributes another signature ambient electronica sound score.

Stuart’s works are known for their evocative, architectural sets, and Do Animals Cry does not disappoint. The six-person movement play revolves around an imposing beaver dam structure that tunnels across the stage. It gets climbed over and upon, raced through and along, blocked up with junk; its myriad suggestions of wilderness, privacy, of insiders and outsiders are vivid. A family of humans in their natural habitat, quiet now as we watch!

From the stage’s opening darkness issue faint giggles, shuffling and dubious panting, before the six performers are caught by the lights in awkwardly joined positions, pyjama-clad. It is immediately known: We have trespassed upon.

Do Animals Cry is a stylish, coded and ultimately frank work that in its delivery captures all the discomfort and tragicomic voyeurism of walking into a family scene not one’s own. After introducing themselves by nickname (both affectionate and cruel versions), the family members continue seemingly from where they left off, confused in their roles but tackling them anyhow, with a few switcheroos. Familial encounters border on violence and eroticism: Smothering mother, jealous son, rivalling brothers, repressed daughter, flirtatious siblings, darkly stoic father.

Family members grab at, charm and manipulate each other with wild caprice, the quickie entanglements tending to cool or sour quickly. Kids and parents are systematically left out or sent to the doghouse (another set piece); some rebel or get even. Although largely derived from improvisation techniques, Stuart’s fleshy movement idiom is nonetheless stylized and given to vigorous, diaphragm-rocking convulsions, ragdoll limbs and wrenching contortions particularly of the torso. Partnering and floorwork is scrappy, sweaty, and rightly justifies the multiple costume changes.

The work’s most affecting scenes drill a pipeline into the awkward, fleeting moments of family life to mine its poignant, rough-edged truths. A suicidally boring dinner table routine is frozen into a series of candid photos (outtakes from the official album, to be sure), the elements of which – a sneaking glance, a misplaced hand, a head coyly tilted – take on Renaissance symbolism. Later, the whole family stands by sheepishly as the new dog, a prize for a neglected child, but also a taxidermic specimen, fails to play fetch. Painfully stretched out, the vignette is a brilliant tragicomic high.

As in the work of many convinced artists, Do Animals Cry could use some editing, as the piece persists past several (perfectly good) false endings and clocks in at over two hours, with no intermission. Extraordinarily committed and connected performances by Joris Camelin, Alexander Jenkins, Adam Linder, Anja Muller, Kotomi Nishiwaki and Frank Willens, however, keep us concerned. Wallflower Nishiwaki surprises at the end with a magnificent tantrum.

Stuart is a rigorously conceptual artist with a recipe that works, a penetrating eye for human behaviour and the restraint to never spell out its secrets. Do Animals Cry proves she is still on her game.

Photo credit: Chris Van der Burght

Do Animals Cry continues through tomorrow at Usine C. For tickets and information, 514-521-4493. Or visit the Usine C site.

So it turns out winning medals isn’t it after all. What really makes the Olympic Games an extraordinary public event is the drama of gods versus ordinary mortals. Elite athletes backed by money and hope, up against mortality, weather, fate.

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir stunning their audience with an ethereal ice ballet performed to the strains of Mahler, a class act for sure. Joannie Rochette wearing black to a practice skate only hours after learning her mother had died of a heart attack. A heartbreaking hockey loss to the American team whose goalie resembled the Great Wall of China on skates.

In a brilliant little book, Three Uses of the Knife: on the Nature and Purpose of Drama, playwright David Mamet says a great play is like the perfect ball game. “What do we wish for in the perfect game? Do we wish for Our Team to take the field and thrash the opposition from the First Moment, rolling up a walkover score at the final gun? No. We wish for a closely fought match that contains many satisfying reversals, but which can be seen retroactively, to have always tended toward a satisfying and inevitable conclusion. We wish, in effect, for a three-act structure.”

Act one: Canadians declare they will “own the podium” and get off to a fantastic start with four gold medals in short order.

Act two: the world dumps on Canada blaming us for everything from bad weather to a fatal pre-game accident, a myriad of sour gripes including mockery for the COC’s slogan, as if the hitherto silent groundhog had poked his head out of the hole, caught sight of his shadow and started barking. As if nobody suspected Canada even cared about winning. That’s where a generation of peace-keeping gets you. Hubris: from the Greek, hybris, meaning exaggerated pride or self-confidence, usually directed against the gods; considered a tragic flaw in the protagonist. Walking with the head held too high, one is unable to see the banana peel lying in wait.

By the end of act two, pundits are playing the blame game. The slogan’s at fault. We never should have talked about owning the podium, not a country that historically, routinely sells everything cheap, raw, unimproved. Here come and get it. You don’t need to fight for our oil. You’re violating the Free Trade Agreement? Don’t mention it. We don’t mix apples and oranges up here.

As Rover blogger Noah Richler has been saying for some time now, this country is in the process of rewriting its central narrative. So far the Vancouver games seem to be playing into his thesis. We’re heading into a major makeover, not just the image we have of ourselves or the image we project, but the way we react to and live in the wider world.

I can hardly wait for act three.

A nocturnal tradition in Montreal, Nuit Blanche returns this Saturday for its 7th edition. From 6 pm until 3 am, art lovers can enjoy perusing the 10 venues of Art Souterrain, which will host paintings, videos, photographs, performances, installations and artists. With 104 projects spread across 4 km in the underground, audiences will encounter a rich and varied plethora of art. Here’s just a small sampling of what you will see along your journey beneath the city.

Jocelyn Michel will be showing three new photographs from his “Admission” project featuring Pierre-Luc Brillant, Luc Picard, Claude Legault, Guylaine Tremblay and Antoine L’Écuyer. Michel’s heavily staged images evoke narratives that are humorous, sarcastic, dark and peaceful. Each photographic mis-en-scène creates a little world unto itself and uses brilliant, saturated colours that accentuate its cinematic style. Michel uses props, layering and other post-production techniques to craft his inspired images. He will be at the show in Zone 3 (Palais des congrès de Montréal) from 8 – 10 pm on Saturday.

Also present in Zone 3 is Michael A. Robinson who will be exhibiting a large-scale sculpture that makes reference to the many “comings and goings” of the Palais as a way of commenting on the “speed of contemporary urban life.” His neuronal, starburst compositions show as much balance as they do outward unsteadiness. Like trees that continuously branch out, his sculptures seek no specific goal other than extension. Robinson is scheduled to be at Palais des congrès from 7 – 10 pm.

If you didn’t catch 2Fik’s show at Galerie SAS in the fall, you missed out. Playful, poignant and well-produced, this photographer’s exploration of identity and integration takes him through a myriad of personalities – literally – that allow him to examine the tension that exists between religion and modern society, the individual and social culture, and the paradoxes that arise within self that tries to encompass all these things. A French-born Moroccan-Canadian gay man who was raised in a Muslim family, 2Fik considers the many ways in which we parse our existence in vibrant photographs that are as epic as they are humorous. He will be present in Zone 10 (Complexe Les Ailes) from 10 pm to 3 am.
For a slightly more engaging experience, people in Zone 4 (Centre de Commerce Mondial) are invited to choose one of Jaber Lutfi’s paintings and carry it around for one minute so that others can be introduced to it. While the task may seem easy, his paintings have a grim and heavy style that may evoke aversion before understanding. His iconoclastic, fabling images create vivid and startling mythological tableaux. If you want to learn more about these fantastical narratives, Lutfi will be around between 6 pm and 3 am.
There’s a lot to see and a lot of ground to cover, so it’s a good thing the STM is open all night long. The chance to meet the artists and ask them about their work offers viewers an excellent opportunity to engage in more depth the art on display. Sleep is for the week – spend this Saturday night in the underground, with art.

Check out the Nuit Blanche site for more information on Montreal’s sleepless night.

Never mind those who say it can’t be done, Gulch is definitely a book you can judge by its cover. The over-saturated colors, the mysteriously supine urbanite hipster, the carnivalesque orgy of objects in the background, even the name “Gulch,” help you understand what you’re getting into. You’re getting into something complex and occasionally self-sufficient.

The sad thing about the book is that it contains works of authentically interesting literature, which the reader might just neglect because of the odd graphic work. Sure, the pencil drawings are quirky and fun, and the big, bold, semi-transparent letters behind the text give it some punch, but sometimes the overall style becomes gimmicky.

Some pages comprise a series of tweets (for example, “Like a parade, only no one was smiling”) strung all over the page, upside down and sideways, forcing the reader to turn the book around and around to read them – risking making you look like an idiot if you read it in a public place. The three-picture (no text) poem “Concrete Sonnet” is hard to understand or appreciate. John Papoutsis’ upwards/downwards “Reset” is distracting, and Karen Correa Da Silva’s multi-fonted poem “(my)riad” doesn’t really profit from its odd form. These are all more likely to give the reader a headache than to convince them to find more of these authors’ works. Yet, while the style may be tacky and dizzying, there are literary talents in this book that are well worth the effort.

Richard Rosenbaum’s “Chicken Soup” is a delightfully constructed Jewish joke. N. Alexander Armstrong’s “The finger points at its own tip” is an absurd dogmatic epic which will get you thinking when you shouldn’t. “The Disappearing House,” by Christopher Olsen, is an interesting lesson in optimism and a nice example of “be careful what you wish for.”

Besides some more classic and eternal themes, like love, death and friendship, the stories often explore our Internet-influenced world, where users create avatars to chat in live feeds, or chat but never talk. In “Like a parade, only no one was smiling,” the whole text is a story written 140 characters at a time by different “followers” on Twitter. The modern, urban world is present in many of the works; a lot of Gulch’s authors are presently living in Toronto.

As was mentioned earlier, many of the stories and poems found in Gulch are worth reading. But the book’s format, unusual and aggressive, almost hostile, is a definite turn-off in what could otherwise have very well been a pleasant reading experience. As you turn the book upside down and wonder if the editors did this just to tease you, you may be missing out on some interesting fiction. And that’s too bad.

Readers are invited to check out the authors’ mini-self-descriptions found at the end of the book. While some are simply descriptive (“I have published here and there”) some of them are laugh-out-loud funny, and you may turn the pages back just to see if the author’s depiction of him- or herself is somewhat coherent with their work found inside.

Joseph Elfassi is a Montreal-based photographer and journalist. For more articles, photographs and videos, check out www.elfassi.ca.

It’s always interesting when a story is published years after it was written—56 years later in the case of Hubert Aquin’s Les sables mouvants. Interesting because Aquin committed suicide in 1977, leaving it slightly unpolished, long before editors got their hands on the text.

Interesting because the translator Joseph Jones—librarian emeritus at the University of British Columbia—used the original typescript to do his translation; a typescript he comments on at the end of the book, pointing out typos, inconsistencies, and erasures.

Though the short story appears in a critical edition available to researchers, Ronsdale’s edition offers the general public Les sables mouvants in both French and English for the first time.

In a Naples full of “serenades, strolls at the port in the evening, the sun,” François awaits his lover Hélène. She’s leaving Paris the next day and will be in Naples the day after that. As he’s waiting, François thinks of their rather unhealthy relationship full of pushing and pulling and frustrations. Only the sex seems to be worthwhile. In fact, the sex makes up for everything else. Unhappy about his memories to the point of doubting some of them, François waits and waits, driving himself crazy until the time comes to meet Hélène at the train station.

Aquin—whose novel Next Episode won Canada Reads in 2003—deftly wrote Les sables mouvants in a first-person stream of consciousness, pulling us into François’s obsession. Indeed, though we may start the short story slowly, savouring the poetry of Aquin’s words—even risking feeling claustrophobic alongside François—we can’t help but speed up as the story progresses, as François becomes increasingly frantic.

The original French, however, is much, much better than the translation. Peppered with awkward sentences and mistranslations, the English text makes us stumble where Aquin’s original words uplifted us. Because the text is written in the stream of consciousness form, many of the sentences are short and to the point. These seem to be translator Joseph Jones’s specialty. But when sentences get more complicated, or verb tenses shift, Jones loses his footing. One of the most flagrant mistranslations occurs when Jones changes items of a simple list into direct objects: “Nous avons scellé un pacte en pleine nuit parce qu’il faisait froid, que nous étions pressés et que nous ne pouvions plus attendre…/We sealed a pact in the middle of the night because it was cold, that we were in a hurry and that we couldn’t wait any longer…”

Though sold as a novella, Les sables mouvants, at thirty-four pages per version plus notes and critical essay by Jones, is little more than a short story. A very good short story whose sex scenes (frank for the 1950s, mostly allegorical for 2010) and frenzy couldn’t be published in the Québec of its time.

Mélanie Grondin is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in carte blanche, Room, Nashwaak Review and other literary magazines. Mélanie is also associate editor at the Montreal Review of Books.