The Sentinel

I posted some comments on this movie at imdb.com (link).

iPod Playlist (even though I don't actually own one)

Our newspaper has been printing playlists from readers in the Saturday "Culture" section, right below the upcoming releases section ... today they printed mine (well, actually not mine, but Chris's - thanks Chris!):

YOURPOD
Today's list comes from Jennifer Walker, with a little encouragement from one of her friends.
"Once it was obvious that I needed to break out of my Canadian pop-roots orientation of the last 10 years -- Blue Rodeo, Great Big Sea, Jann Arden, Colin James, et cetera," she writes, "My buddy Chris in Australia was kind enough to give me some recommendations which I have thoroughly enjoyed."
And, she adds, downloaded legally from emusic.com, which specializes in indie artists and labels.
Here are Jennifer's selections:

- Mercury Rev, Goddess on a Highway
- Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Life in L.A.
- Magnetic Fields, Papa Was a Rodeo
- Tindersticks, People Keep Comin' Around
- Pavement, Passat Dream
- Cat Power, Cross Bones Style
- Galaxie 500, Blue Thunder
- Jens Lekman, Tram #7 to Heaven
- Jose Gonzalez, Heartbeats
- Spain, Every Time I Try
- Sufjan Stevens, Chicago
- The Pixies, Here Comes Your Man
- Al Phoenix, Bird Whispering
- Animal Collective, Did You See the Words
OK, that was a little more than 10 songs ... but we'll let it slide this time.

More films part 2 ...

A few days ago I borrowed a DVD that my mom had rented (was quite surprised that she'd rent something in Hindi with English subtitles, even if it was by a Canadian director) - Water (2005), by Deepa Mehta. I remember hearing a few years back about how when she originally tried to film this in India, she ran into a lot of religious protests - she ended up delaying the project for a few years then filming in Sri Lanka instead (which then makes it a bit amusing how many articles online refer to her as an "Indian" filmmaker - yes, she was born there but immigrated to Canada many years ago, and I'm not sure how welcome she is in India by certain groups).

The film is set in the late 1930's, at which time child marriage was still quite common, and widows were basically cast out by their families under the guise of religion and usually ended up living in poverty. One of the main characters, Chuyia, was married so young that when she was widowed by age 8 she didn't even realize she had been married or who her husband was - others of the widows had never met their husbands. So there were some interesting social aspects (especially since Mehta points out at the end that there are still millions of widows living under similar conditions today in India despite some loosening of cultural restrictions), a love story, and hopefulness at the end that things might change (e.g., the influence of Gandhi). I really enjoyed the film, and thought that Mehta did a good job of weaving the water theme throughout - from the opening scene of a pond with water lilies, to the holy water used in many rituals, to the many times it was raining, to the focus on the river Ganges. (and I thought it was pretty amazing that the actor playing Chuyia, a Sri Lankan girl, didn't speak either English or Hindi so learned her lines phonetically via an interpreter - in one of the special features on the DVD).

(and tonight I'l see something entirely different with my husband, The Sentinel, with Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland. Oh, and I guess with one of those Desperate Housewives actors too, not that I have or ever will watch that show. Tomorrow night I'm going with friends to see Eeny Meeny (2000), a Czech comedy that's part of a Central European Film "Festival" they're having at our Metro Cinema).

More films part 1...

Last week my husband and I went out to see the "World's Hottest Commercials" at the Garneau Theatre, which is "a compilation of the winning TV commercials chosen at the annual Clio Awards" and a fund-raiser for the Edmonton International Film Festival. This review from the Edmonton Sun brings up the excellent point that if all TV ads were this entertaining, there wouldn't be the problem of people trying to avoid them all the time. The humourous ones usually seem to get the best response, but I also really enjoy the cultural insight provided by seeing ads from different places... too bad in that respect that they mostly seem to be American these days (a few years ago there were a lot more from other countries). Other thoughts I had:

1) I'm guessing public drunkenness must be a problem in Thailand such that they need public service ads to address the issue (which were quite amusing actually).

2) After the Adidas basketball player who was in 3 ads (sorry, don't recognize many basketball players), the next most frequently used "celebrity" would have been Lance Armstrong in two Nike ads ... I guess he's going to be around for a long time even though he's now retired from cycling (though these ads would have been from 2005/2004 when he was still riding). (OT - interesting article about US cycling after Armstrong in the Financial Times )

3) Amusing that the Citroen ad was done by a Vancouver ad agency - don't think there are too many Citroens sold in Canada (and definitely no TV ads for them that I've ever seen).

Proof I was influenced by Kids in the Hall

A month or more ago, I was referring to someone as "evil" (I think because they were teasing me incessantly), and suddenly realized it was probably a throwback to my days of watching Kids in the Hall (rather than any reference to good versus evil in a philosophical or religious sense; nor to George W. Bush's "axis of evil", attributed to the Canadian speech-writer David Frum).

KITH was a Canadian comedy troupe that had a TV series from 1988-94 (ie., my formative young adult years) and was probably the start of my tradition of watching various comedy shows on CBC (22 Minutes, Air Farce, Rick Mercer). There was a series of sketches on the show about the "Pit of Ultimate Darkness", where the host Sir Simon Milligan and his manservant Hecubus would do things that really weren't all that bad, yet were so proud of themselves for their evilness. There's a transcript of one of the sketches here, but I think you have to see the actual sketch to really get it...

Anyway, today I was reading the paper and came across an article about US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, similar to this article, but the headline in the Journal was "6 Retired US Generals want Rumsfeld gone" - the first thing that popped into my head was the recurring KITH sketch "30 Helens Agree"

30 Helens Agree was a sketch featuring 30 women supposedly named Helen who would all agree on something ridiculous or arbitrary. For example, "Thirty Helens agree: If you have a good idea, you should write it down."

(my scary revelation for the day about the influence of pop culture I guess - probably why I don't watch much TV anymore)

Films - down to just the notes now

Okay, so my goal to post my thoughts on one film a day (as mentioned previously) didn't last at all...

so here are the rest of the notes I made back in January, in note form because otherwise they'll never end up here. I apologize in advance for any spoilers (not really any big ones I don't think).

Hable Con Ella (Talk To Her) 2002 - directed by
Pedro Almodóvar.
-Themes of love, loyalty, friendship (however atypical or unlikely the circumstances); emphasizing the borderline of what's considered "right" and "wrong"; amusing that Benigno gives advice because of his "experience with women" (his only experience really is with his mother previously who was ill, and Alicia who is in a coma) - yet he's likely right with a lot of what he said (you have to talk to them = women), but applying his advice to those who are comatose is a surreal.

Der Krieger und die Kaiserin (The Princess and the Warrior) 2000 - directed by Tom Tykwer (and he was involved with the music for the film as well, which I thought was interesting).
-points out how it is hard to leave what is familiar to do something for yourself - in this case for Sissi the familiar was caring for others (even if it was overattachment to the point of being somewhat bizarre)
-similarities to my own personal situation - letting patients get too attached/too dependent when I started off in practice and hard to change that later when I tried.
-Sissi quite naive to expect that something will happen just because you want it to (eg. not understanding Bodo's rejection of her initially)
-the tracheotomy reminded me of an episode of ER where George Clooney's character saved a kid's life in a drainpipe ... somewhat overdone (not sure which came first, the ER episode or the film ... now that I think of it, I wondered the same thing about another Tykwer film "Run Lola Run", whether it came before or after an X-Files episode it reminded me of).

Adaptation 2002 - directed by Spike Jonze
-I could relate somewhat to the anxieties of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in the film
-liked the quote from Douglas Kaufman, "You are what you love, not what loves you"
-(spoiler) at the end, I thought all the sudden action was actually Charlie's brother's screenplay somehow rather than "real".

Diarios de motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries) 2004
-interesting to see the South American scenery
-also interesting having been to Cuba in 2004 (and wanting to go back to Havana for a longer visit someday) - learned Cuban history from a different viewpoint then including a better understanding then who Guevara was (the movie was about his earlier life).
-Guevara seemes so frail and slight in the movie, compared to the "larger than life" figure he seems to have become.
-interesting how he was trying to be like the common people, for example, at the leper colony, and giving money to the mining couple.
-his loyalty was prominent, such as to his girlfriend (until she dumped him via letter).
-on a side note, anything about Cuban history (eg. Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis) was always portrayed in school as the "bad communists" taking over; whereas in Cuba it was more the long struggle for independence, first from the Spanish then from the American influence, and that Castro was the only one who allowed the Cubans to achieve independence. Not that I'm a Castro supporter, but interesting the different points of view there can be...

Pride and Prejudice 2005
-I had to go see this, because the novel is one of my all-time favourite books and Jane Austen one of my favourite authors (yeah, I was probably the only one in my high school and university English classes who actually enjoyed reading it).
-compared to the prior mini-series, this film version had good flow and good action - good editing/screenplay writing to cut out extraneous parts of the book
-the dancing/ballroom scenes were really neat IMO
-quite romantic overall - definitely "chick flick" category
-at a younger stage of my life I probably would have ended up like Jane - too quiet, not making my liking/affection well-known and having others misinterpret that I wasn't interested (but now I'm more assertive and open, not so introverted :-) - and married, so it doesn't really make a difference in the sense of Jane in the movie anyway).

Whew. I think I even missed a few that I didn't make notes on. Maybe I'll get around to them in the summer or something ...

I feel like a real cyclist now...

fell off my bike near the end of a really good ride on Saturday, first time out this spring and managed to avoid problems with all the gravel on the roads still and all the cars who aren't used to seeing cyclists out yet, then crashed in front of the house next door to ours. I went over the handlebars I think, hit my head (yay for helmets!), shoulder, elbow, both knees, bent my glasses out of shape, and gashed my knee pretty good.

So, I got to experience the other side of the health-care system. The wait in Emergency isn't as long as all my patients seem to tell me, when you go early evening on a Saturday after a really nice day (i.e., not a time anyone really wants to go see a doctor) - just over 2 hours from when we arrived to when we left. The resident and attending physician were initially concerned that perhaps the laceration had gone into the bursa above the knee, but determined that it hadn't. I got 6 stitches and my tetanus booster (at least I won't have to concern myself with arranging to get that updated later this year now). And my training for the Coronation Triathlon in less than 2 months is on hold for at least a week or two... (which sucks because I had just finally got myself really motivated to start training lots, it finally felt like spring).

So, now 2 days later I'm really stiff and sore, and headachy - weird pressure feeling in my head, feels kind of fuzzy at times, had the afternoon off work anyway so I took a nap, headache got worse trying to sing at my choir rehearsal tonight so I left early ... nothing really severe, but just kind of irritating that I don't feel "right". Hopefully it all settles down in a few more days :-)

(and to put things in perspective, at least it wasn't like pro cyclist George Hincapie whose handlebars broke off in the Paris-Roubaix classic race this weekend, leaving him with a shoulder separation; or Saul Raisin, a young American pro cyclist who crashed last week and is currently in a coma...)

A book that made me think a lot ...

about a number of issues (which to me, means it's a good book - that, and it had an emotional impact):

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002) - reviews on about.com and salon.com

The book is the story of Calliope/Cal Stephanides, who has 5-Alpha-Reductase deficiency (no that's not a spoiler, it's in the very first paragraph of the book), so was brought up as a girl until his true condition was discovered when he was fourteen. This would be considered an intersex condition: "a person born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male".

Part of the story was about Cal's rebellion against the "typical" medical treatment, which would involve surgery for him to "look like a normal girl" (never mind that his chromosomes were XY = male). This would be the sort of treatment we learned about in medical school for such conditions, and I never really thought about it further or about the impact on the people involved. There is apparently lots of debate these days about whether such surgery is appropriate, as technically most of it would be considered cosmetic/not medically required, and it may in fact have adverse effects in terms of sexual functioning.

This made me think of similar controversies in other areas of medicine, such as cochlear implants to "cure" deafness - except that many in the deaf community don't consider it a condition that needs to be cured. Or even routine circumcision, a procedure I deliberately never learned, even though several of my colleagues offered to teach me when I used to deliver babies - I was happy to refer my patients elsewhere for this if a parent wanted it for their son, but really didn't want to do it myself. The whole idea of "what is normal?" and who gets to decide this fascinates me - at work I often see the things we do to conform to society's norms (or what we perceive as society's norms), ranging from cosmetic surgery to eating disorders to suppressing our emotionality to workaholism ... some things relatively harmless, others quite harmful.

And then today, there was this article in our local paper (had to find a link that wasn't subscriber-only), about the Bedouin tradition of marrying cousins and the genetic anomalies and rare genetic diseases that have resulted. (That was part of the story as well, Cal's family history and how the genetic condition came about). They have been doing some work in terms of prenatal diagnosis with the Bedouin in Israel and Gaza, to allow for termination of pregnancies where severe conditions are diagnosed prenatally. Technology is at a point where for some conditions we can even select a non-affected embryo (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) before in-vitro fertilization to prevent the need for later termination of the pregnancy - and the question arises as to how far we should go?

But overall, I just enjoyed the story (certainly not typical or "mainstream") and the writing in the book - riveting enough that I stayed up late to finish reading it after spending most of the afternoon and evening reading. Thanks to Chris for the recommendation :-)

Spring is finally here (I hope)...

Although spring "officially" started on March 20, that was only 2 days after we had a record snowfall for March, so it really didn't feel like spring at all. This week, though, we've had consistently above-freezing temperatures during the day and the snow has pretty much all melted off the roads (and most south-facing yards). I think it was Wednesday when it was really bright and sunny in the morning and I thought to myself, "could it be that spring is finally here?" (you learn not to get overly hopeful living in Edmonton, there's always the possibility of April or even May snowstorms).

I was able to go out for a really great run today (great in terms of weather and motivation - sunny and +10 C, maybe not so great in terms of running as I was over 40 minutes for 5 km). Now if only the city would clean the sand off the streets soon so I can ride my bike without fear of skidding into traffic ...