Ten Little Indians

Our vacation started with a beach house stuffed to the rafters with ten people... My parents and their friends the Bells moved to another house after two days, as planned. That left six of us there. On the Thursday my sister and her family left for Miami airport at the crack of dawn. In the middle of the morning Chris and I left as well, joining my parents and the Bells at the other rented house on the far side of the island. In the afternoon we drove back up to Vaca Key for a swim at Sombrero Beach while my mother did some shopping in Marathon. Dinner was a hearty home-cooked potato salad, with nary a deep fryer in sight.

Friday was a repeat of Thursday with the Bells heading out at the crack of dawn to drive back to Canada. We headed back up to Vaca Key again in the afternoon, this time to pick up a rental car from the Marathon airport so Chris and I could get to the Ft. Lauderdale airport the following morning without inconveniencing my parents. My parents shopped (again) while I went for another swim with Chris.

Chris and I were up and on the road by 6:20 the next morning with a beautiful sunrise laid out before us. But that story has already been told...

During our two days at the second house I managed to find, start and finish all 230 pages of the singer Jimmy Buffet's 1989 collection of stories and memoirs, Tales from Margaritaville. I thought it would be fun to read some Florida Keys stories. It was a brisk read, but the characters were unlikely and rather opaque, and they had an annoying habit of making unexplained life changes. A bit like a pop song I guess! To his credit he did an entertaining job of evoking the "old Keys" lifestyle, largely through the persona of a Wyoming cowboy...

Listening to: Road To Nowhere by Talking Heads from Little Creatures.

My Debut

So yesterday was my acting debut, and a long debut it was... Twelve hours on set, from 1:30 PM to 1:30 AM. I thought I would be released at 7:00 PM, but they held on to me and used me in a second role. I had been cast as a "patient" but they decided to use me as a "doctor" as well.

This meant that I had 'lunch' with the crew at 8:00 PM, managed to finish reading Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake, listen to a tonne of music on my iPod, and still having plenty of time to chat to the other actors. One woman, a full-time actress who was scheduled for the final shot waited ten hours for her shot. She just sat there and fidgeted, with nothing to read or listen to.

This is how the day went. By 1:30 PM everyone had arrived on set and at 2:00 PM we were all brought to the lobby for a large group shot. 3:00 PM everyone returned to the holding area in the cafeteria. The background people were released (good riddance to the yappy extra behind me in the group shot!) and the feature actors started waiting... My scheduled scene, in which I played a patient having his x-ray explained to him, began shooting around 4:30 PM. Around 6:30 PM I was done, but they held on to me after the two shots for a bit. At 7:00 PM they told me they wanted the option of using me in the following shots as a doctor rather than a patient. Over the next six hours I did a bit of background work and then finally had my turn as the "doctor" at 1:00 AM. I scooted out as fast as possible, but had to track down a security guard to get my car out of the adjacent underground parking garage.

Unfortunately, I'll never see my first screen appearance. The project is for the American Medical Association, apparently for internal use.

Turning to the book I finished for a minute, I really enjoyed Oryx and Crake. It's a very bleak view of the near future but really about the emotional landscape of the narrator, Jimmy. It's kind of a worse alternative to her unsettling novel The Handmaid's Tale! Atwood has written a very clever and detailed imagining of how genetic engineering could transform our world, and of the consequences that might arise. (This is the mark of really excellent science fiction.)

Listening to: The Boy in the Bubble by Paul Simon from Graceland.

Episode 217, in which Ben watches some films and reads some books.

One of the things I do with this blog is keep track of the films I see and the books I read. A bit compulsive I know, but there you go... I've got a back log of films and books to pass judgment on so here they are, in order.

A Short History of Progress: This book is a reprint of a recent Massey Lecture series given by Canadian author/historian Ronald Wright. A Short History is a thought-provoking look at human society, how it has evolved, and how our civilizations repeatedly back themselves into "progress traps". Think Mesopotamia (aka Eden), the Maya, Easter Island, etc. Can we spot the next one before it blind-sides us? Maybe...

Walk the Line: The Johnny Cash bio-pic. Great performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, including their covers of Johnny Cash and June Carter's iconic songs. I really enjoyed the film, especially seeing Reese out of a pink skirt and handling herself well, but with Ray's Jamie Foxx still fresh in my mind it gets the silver medal.

Date Movie: This was a movie that I'd never consider but my twelve year old son was desperate to see. It was full of movie parodies (Shallow Hal, Hitch, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Meet the Fockers come immediately to mind) and sexual humour of the most predictable kind. The actual plot was simply girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy back. Wish I could get those two hours of my life back. My son's review? "Best movie ever."

The Kite Runner: The best-selling first novel by an Afghani doctor now living in the USA. The Kite Runner is a powerful story of childhood mistakes, shame and ultimately redemption. It's also a remarkable taste of the religious and class conflicts that have made recent life in Afghanistan so harsh. Keep the hankies within reach.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story: Without a doubt this was strange animal, although I enjoyed it (Sheryl wasn't so sure). Tristram Shandy is based on an 18th century comic satire. In the film the cast play their modern real-world selves half the time and the period plot never gets past the protagonist birth... Tristram Shandy takes post-modernism to a whole new level and then twists it sideways. I get the feeling that there were layers to this film that I missed, but what I "got" was entertaining.

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso: I've know about this 1989 film for years, but finally got around to seeing it on DVD. What a sentimental gem! Beautiful performances and an incredible peek into 1950's Sicily. The film chronicles life in the village of Giancaldo, the rivalry/friendship of little Toto/Salvatore and Alfredo the projectionist, and ultimately Salvatore's lost love and home. Keep the hankies within reach here too.

La Peau douce (The Soft Skin): I saw this last week with Sheryl at Cinematheque, which is currently running a short retrospective of the Françoise Dorléac's films (Françoise, who died in a car crash in 1967, is Catherine Deneuve's forgotten older sister). La Peau douce was directed and written by François Truffaut in 1964 and shot in black and white with some shaky camera work but great editing. The tale of a doomed affair between a married publisher and a stewardess (Françoise is beautiful beyond words) is well told and ends with a tragi-comic twist. The last scene of the film was a complete hoot.

And that's all the reviews that are fit to print.

Listening to: Northern Lights by Lux from Northern Lights.