One-Week Job Project

My interview with blogger-turned-author Sean Aiken is in this week's WE.

Blogger Sean Aiken, seen here at the controls of an Air Force helicopter, tried out 52 jobs in 52 weeks, and leveraged his online chronicle into his first book, The One-Week Job Project.

Credit: supplied

Blogger becomes a Jack of all trades

Posted By: Andrea Warner

03/24/2010 12:00 AM

Like a lot of recent college graduates, Sean Aiken was completely clueless about how to translate 20 years of schooling into a meaningful career. The drought of regimented daily rituals — classes, homework, deadlines, repeat — had an almost paralyzing effect on the then 25-year-old Capilano College Business Administration major. Living in his parents’ basement, he faced the question every post-grad dreads: What are you going to do with your life?

Five years later, it seems, “Write a book!” was the long-awaited answer to that query. Aiken is the author of The One-Week Job Project, a book based on his 2006-2007 blog of the same name, detailing his year-long adventure trying out 52 different jobs over 52 weeks. The often-humorous collection details Aiken’s career smorgasbord (exterminator, tattoo artist, cowboy), falling in love on the road, and a few offers he flat-out refused (gay porn). In an interview with WE, Aiken talks about finding a career and the future of the One-Week Job Project.

WE: You graduated with a degree in business administration, but you ended up with a book deal. Had you always been interested in writing?
Aiken: Growing up, I wasn’t too interested in formal writing, but I always enjoyed putting my thoughts on paper. Most often it would transpire into short poems or rants about life.

How did you arrive at the idea for a series of one-week jobs?
When I was looking for a job, I saw all of these important-sounding job titles, but I had no idea what the job would actually be like. I was scared at the thought of committing to one, not liking it, and then feeling trapped in the position. I think a mistake that many people make when deciding on a career is to focus on the title and ignore the characteristics of the particular career and its associated lifestyle.

The fiscal feasibility of something like the One-Week Job Project seems daunting, particularly since you donated your work earnings to charity. Did you have savings to help you embark on a year of constant travel?
I had a few hundred dollars in savings to get me started, but I had no clue how I was going to keep it up for a year. For the first five weeks I stayed in the Vancouver area, so I was able to live at home [in my parents’ basement]. Once the project started, I wrote a post on my website, OneWeekJob.com, to try and find a sponsor to help with travel expenses. Luckily, NiceJob.ca contacted me in Week 5 and agreed to give me $1,000 a month. If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have been able to continue. During the entire year, I didn’t have to pay for accommodations once. I stayed with my employers, with people who contacted me through the website, or used [home-stay website] CouchSurfing.org. I also kept costs down by taking the bus, hitchhiking, or using Craigslist ride-share whenever possible.

How did the project impact you?
I learned that I don’t necessarily need to have my “dream job” in order to be happy at work. There are many other factors that contribute to job satisfaction. When I asked my coworkers what they liked most about their job, the common answer I heard was the people they worked with. I also recognized that those who were most passionate about their jobs were the ones who had a vision of how they were contributing to something greater than themselves. For example, I worked on an organic dairy farm with a guy named George. The job demands long hours, very hard work, and early mornings. After a couple of days I thought, “How can anyone enjoy this?” But George seemed to love it. To George, he was providing food for thousands of people while contributing to the environment with his organic farming practices. He understood the significance of his job, and that’s where he derived his job satisfaction.

What are your next steps?
Currently, we’re finishing post-production on the documentary that will be available at the same time as the book. Also, I just started the One-Week Job Program, which will allow others to have a similar experience. We’re providing three individuals $3,000 each over the course of two months. They’ll perform eight different one-week jobs and blog from the website. Anyone interested can apply at OneWeekJob.com.

The One-Week Job Project will be available across Canada beginning April 17 from Penguin Books.

Atom Egoyan

My interview with Atom Egoyan appears in this week's WE.

Acclaimed Canadian director Atom Egoyan on the set of his latest film, Chloe, with stars Amanda Seyfried (left) and Julianne Moore.

Credit: supplied

Atom Egoyan lets ‘Chloe’ put words in his mouth

Posted By: Andrea Warner

03/24/2010 12:00 AM

When Atom Egoyan watched the sexy French thriller Nathalie in 2005, he had no idea that three years later he’d be at the helm of Chloe, its North American adaptation, and knee-deep in A-list actors, rising stars, and unthinkable tragedy.

Now, on the other side of directing his most star-studded, Hollywood-friendly fare to date, the director spoke with WE by phone while relaxing at his parents’ home in Victoria, shortly before embarking on several weeks of non-stop publicity for the film. (It opens in select cities, including Vancouver, on March 26.)

For Egoyan fans, the film’s premise — a middle-aged woman (Julianne Moore) hires a young, unstable escort (Amanda Seyfried) to test her husband’s (Liam Neeson) fidelity, only to find herself seduced as well — echoes elements of his previous work. Drama, deceit, and the darkest aspects of sexuality can be found in previous Egoyan works such as The Sweet Hereafter and Where the Truth Lies. The difference with Chloe, he says, was freedom from his own words.

“It was an opportunity to work outside my normal comfort zone,” Egoyan laughs, alluding to his first time directing a feature script that he didn’t pen himself. “In terms of my own scripts, I was getting more and more complicated, so this was a really good opportunity. It’s subject matter that was close enough to my own sensibility, [but] it offered me the option to sort of simplify my own work.”

The script highlights sex, obsession, and insecurity, and offers a particularly steamy scene in which Moore and Seyfried crank up the heat. (Egoyan’s own rule to ensure a natural performance between his co-stars: “Make sure they understand how they’re being photographed, that they’re going to look great!”) But it was the script’s underlying theme — a long-married couple trying to find a way back to each other — that proved particularly close to the director’s heart.

“I think there’s this point at which you take certain things for granted, and you forget that a relationship involves a lot of work,” Egoyan says. “Even though things become more comfortable, that very comfort creates a strange paralysis sometimes, and people can kind of drift into a strange place where they lose an erotic excitement. It takes a lot of work; you have to find space and ways to reignite things.”

Somewhat surprisingly, writer-director-producer Ivan Reitman, best known for big-budget comedies like Ghostbusters, was the initial mastermind behind Chloe. He handpicked Egoyan after deciding to adapt writer-director Anne Fontaine’s Nathalie for North American audiences. Egoyan was flattered by Reitman’s selection, but acknowledges there was some give and take throughout filming.

“I had heard that he’s a tough producer, but it’s all about communication,” Egoyan says. “We spent a lot of time together beforehand. He was very clear with me: He’d loved my movies, but there were certain things he didn’t want this to be and certain things he wanted me to focus on. And I listened to him, because this was a film that he wanted to direct at one point, but he realized he wouldn’t be able to get the performers he wanted because he’s used to doing comedy... and so he was very honest with me and I was very honest with him.”

Convincing Reitman to let him set Chloe in Toronto (instead of its scripted location, San Francisco) required some effort on Egoyan’s part. He attributes this, in part, to a generational shift between the two of them.

“Ivan, James Cameron, Norman Jewison — these are directors that had to leave the country [to achieve success],” Egoyan says. “I came from a different formation. I was really happy making my films here, because these are films that couldn’t be made in the States. I never had that fantasy of moving to the States for my career.”

And yet, for all of Chloe’s remarkable firsts, one tragic accident almost stalled the entire film. Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson, died during filming after falling and hitting her head at a Quebec ski resort. Over a year has passed, but Egoyan still sounds awed when he remembers Neeson returning to the set and his role as a philandering husband (depicted in graphic sex scenes) after taking just a week off to bury his wife and console his two children.

“He was a hero,” Egoyan says. “When he came back, he wanted to finish the film as quickly as possible, and we just had to contain our emotions. It was amazing. It was a miracle. But, given what this film was about, and what he had to play, it was really monumental what he was able to pull off.”

With the emotional and mental toll of Chloe nearly behind him, Egoyan is pragmatic about whether his future plans include directing more scripts written by other people.

“You have to be really honest with yourself,” he says. “This script was close enough to me that I felt I could do something unique with it. You can read a script and enjoy it, but are you the best person to direct it? If there are people you think would do a better job, you shouldn’t be directing it.”

Hot Tub Time Machine

My review of Hot Tub Time Machine appears in WE this week.

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE

Starring John Cusack, Rob Corddry

Directed by Steve Pink

Hot Tub Time Machine pretty much plays its cards in its title, so if those four words don’t make you smile, just stay home. This is a comedy that laughs at itself, its stars, and everything ’80s, including Cold War paranoia, affirmative action, cocaine use, gay panic, and, of course, that decade’s Day-Glo parade of neon fashion travesties.

Half of the film’s winking brilliance is in the casting: ’80s poster boy John Cusack is Adam, a corporate schmuck who’s grown apart from his old buddies, Lou (Rob Corddry) and Nick (Craig Robinson), and whose mid-twenties computer-nerd nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke), lives in his basement. After an accident nearly claims Lou’s life, the four men embark on a weekend road-trip to revisit the ski-lodge hangout of the original trio’s youthful glory days.

Too bad it’s now a shuttered ghost town. The bellhop (an excellent Crispin Glover) is surly and one-armed, and the hot tub’s on the fritz. But then, suddenly, the hot tub’s bubbling invitingly, and the men jump in for some drunken, hilarious debauchery. They wake up and — bam!— it’s 1986. Oh, and Chevy Chase is the mystical, cryptic repairman who instructs the group to do exactly as they did the first time around, over two decades ago (even though Jacob wasn’t even alive then), so that they don’t alter the future and other time-travel mumbo jumbo. Of course, the older trio can’t resist trying to do things better the second time around, since their current lives are such messes.

The script, co-written by Josh Heald and Sean Anderson (She’s Out of My League, Sex Drive), offers a clever hijacking on the typical bromance genre of raunchy guy comedies, but it sags a few times under the weight of a handful of predictable moments. Luckily, these stumbles are offset by many awesome WTF scenes (such as an oft-referenced, never explained “Great White Buffalo” chant) and a cast seemingly game for anything. What might have turned out to be another tepid dip into bathroom and locker-room humour is instead one of the year’s funniest films so far. ★★★ —Andrea Warner

HIVE3

My review of HIVE3 is in this week's WE.

Theatre Replacement’s S.P.A.M.

Credit: supplied

STAGE: HIVE returns with eclecticism intact

Posted By: Andrea Warner

It might seem like something as cool and fun as HIVE, the annual independent-theatre showcase now in its third year, belongs in a larger and more cosmopolitan city, like Montreal or Berlin. What Vancouver has done to deserve it, who knows? But I, for one, am appropriately grateful. HIVE3, which launched March 11 and continues through to the 20th, offers the same ambitious set-up as in previous years: a continuous rotation of site-specific theatre installations, all under 10 minutes, from 12 different local, independent companies. The individual productions never fail to surprise, with bursts of creativity on display no matter which way you turn. Here are some highlights from my first go-round.

THE INTERVIEW
Boca del Lupo’s sobering and sad meditation about a journalist who struggles with survivor’s guilt after a tour of duty as a foreign correspondent. It’s wisely crafted, intimate, and offers food for thought on the experiences most of us take for granted.

S.P.A.M.
An audience-participation fest that needed better microphones on the night I saw it, but that features a fun twist on the act of drunk-dialing. Two members from Theatre Replacement sit at small desks with martinis and a list of phone numbers from audience members, each of whom have agreed to be phoned and asked live questions (which cover a range of embarrassing topics, like first kisses). It’s lighter fare than some of the other pieces, but it’s damn fun.

NAPathy
Easily the strangest experience I had at HIVE3 was witnessing the collaboration between Theatre Conspiracy and Gasheart Theatre. Its three actors — loosely representing father, mother, and child — were given the hardest task of the night, tackling a squirrely script, laden with subtext and metaphor, that alternately lambastes and celebrates Canadian icons and nationalistic fervour, and also finds time to address subjects such as cupcakes, sexism, and physical abuse.

ANA
November Theatre presented one of the loveliest moments of the evening with a nostalgic trip down memory lane that romanticizes the vinyl LP over digital music. A solo performance that commands the audience’s attention.

HOUSE/HOME
Pi Theatre accomplishes something incredible, crafting one of the rawest, most compellingly emotional pieces of theatre to grace any Vancouver stage this year. That it lasts a mere 10 minutes, at most, is the icing on the cake. Wearing headphones, the audience is entirely immersed in a push-pull war of words between a married couple, and a third party who sings the soundtrack to their possibly unravelling existence.

HIVE virgins should note that the evening, which features the theatre components from 7-10:30 p.m., and various indie bands every evening starting at 11 p.m., is an exercise in organized chaos. Planning to see every event? Schedule your attendance to spread out over the remaining three nights, because gaining entrance to the show of your choice isn’t really your choice at all. (For example, Electric Company holds draws about every 30 to 60 minutes to determine which people get to view their work — one person at a time.) Gaining entrance to many of the spectacles is a crapshoot, but almost everything you hit is worthwhile.

HIVE3 continues to March 20 at the Centre for Digital Media (577 Great Northern Way). Tickets $20-$25 from 604-629-8849. Cover for bands only (after 10 p.m.), $5. Info: BuzzBuzzBuzz.ca

Indigo Girls

My interview with the Indigo Girls appears in the current issue of Xtra West.

OUT IN FRONT. "It was scary to be gay - we didn't want that to be our identifier at first," the Indigo Girls' Amy Ray (back, with Emily Saliers) admits. "We had mentors who were women artists and had seen them be so pigeonholed."

The Indigo Girls on how they stay relevant
By Andrea Warner

Their image might be as fashionable as socks and sandals, but the Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray and Emily Saliers don’t care.

In fact, the lesbian folk-rock duo has made a career ignoring the naysayers and bulldozing the barriers of convention. How else could they have survived more than 20 years in the music industry, navigating a male-dominated, heterosexual hierarchy?

Ray admits it hasn’t been easy. The Indigo Girls released their first major label album in 1988 and earned a Grammy Award in 1990. They continued to generate Billboard-charting albums, building a large fan base even before joining the women-only Lilith Fair festival, which may have marked the height of their popularity.

“I feel like women are still stuck in that cycle where for a while it’s really trendy to have more strong women and more women played on the radio, and then there’ll be a backlash against it,” Ray says.

She and Saliers agree that rock music is the biggest hurdle for women in music.

“Rock is still really male and really white,” Ray says. “Folk music, that’s where women are either kind of trendy or they’re not.

“When we started, we were coming on the heels of our mentors who had to struggle to have a word in the studio,” she continues. “The producer would run things and take the instruments out of the women’s hands and put them in some studio guy’s hands, and that was the story we were told by our older friends in the corporate major label world. Then Heart came along, and other groups, that made it obvious that women can do it themselves.”

But the Indigo Girls weren’t just women being self-sufficient. They were also lesbians, publicly out in virtually untested waters.

“It was scary to be gay — we didn’t want that to be our identifier at first,” Ray admits. “We had mentors who were women artists and had seen them be so pigeonholed and were so bitter about it. You know, ‘Don’t just play to a gay audience, it will be your doom.’ After our second CD, I started talking more about it in the press, and Emily was coming around to talking about it. We definitely came out through a time when fear was a big part of it.”

Being openly gay allowed the Indigo Girls to mine a built-in audience, but it’s proven to be a double-edged sword. For better or for worse, their music has been described as “political lesbian folk music.”

“We might sing to an audience of political lesbians, and we might be political lesbians, but I don’t know if you can categorize our music that way,” Rays says. “I understand why people use that. I think we’re still in a queer movement in music where we’re trying to be part of an infrastructure where the gatekeepers are still straight white men. But I don’t really pay attention to it anymore. In my opinion, it’s not really a way to define music.... It’s like when they say, ‘That guy plays white hip hop.’ You know they don’t mean anything good,” Ray laughs.

“I can see why we’re labelled as such,” Saliers says. “There’s not a lot of open-mindedness. Once you’re gay, you’re gay and you’re pegged. My first fear was that we would be pigeonholed and we were, but that’s just short-mindedness. It’s just life. Not all of our songs have political content, and they’re not all about lesbian reality, though that’s the lens with which we view life, obviously. Can’t get around that.”

It’s also impossible to ignore the fact that plenty of other rock and pop acts have surpassed the Indigo Girls in popularity. Lady Gaga (Ray is a huge fan), Katy Perry and a host of others have recently claimed the spotlight, but neither Saliers or Ray is concerned about fading into obscurity just yet.

“The proof is in young people experiencing our music in a positive way. If you can speak to young people, then I think your music is still relevant. We’ve been around so long that our first generation of fans all have kids now, practically, so we get their kids, thank God,” Saliers laughs.

“Amy and I write songs about what’s happening in the world, and we’re deeply troubled by war and injustice and inspired by nature, and that subject matter will always be relevant. It’s a human concern; it doesn’t matter if you’re a lesbian, an artist or a postal worker.”

The recently remounted Lilith Fair will likely broaden the Indigo Girls’ audience, and the timing couldn’t be better. They’ve recently given the middle finger to conventional record labels, successfully going independent again and reclaiming their roots with their most recent album, Poseidon and the Bitter Bug. Their last independent release was 25 years ago.

“It’s so liberating,” Saliers says. “There’s nothing a label can do for us that we can’t do on our own. We have the same management and the same agent, and we’ve had the same touring people for a long time, so we can do it ourselves. There’s nothing a label does for us except get in our way, slow down the process of getting stuff out and take a chunk of our money.”

“We’re older, we’ve been around for a long time, we’re queer, we’re political, all those things that record labels don’t know how to deal with,” Ray adds. “It’s funny. It’s like they were better about it in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, dealing with that strident artist personality that’s doing something against the grain.

“Major labels are for people who can be part of the mainstream and that’s fine, but we don’t fit in there,” Ray says. “It feels good to be doing what we want. That’s how we started and it’s always been where my heart’s at.”

Hey Ocean!

My interview with Hey Ocean! appears in this week's WE: Best of the City issue.

Hey Ocean! respond with varying degrees of enthusiasm to their Best Local Band win.

Credit: supplied

Sea of possibilities

Posted By: Andrea Warner

03/10/2010 12:00 AM

Five years ago, Vancouver’s Hey Ocean! were just dipping their toes into Vancouver’s seemingly bottomless indie music scene. Nowadays, the pop-funk quartet (singer-flautist Ashleigh Ball, singer-guitarist David Beckingham, singer-bassist Dave Vertesi, and drummer Adam Cormier) are seasoned pros who have built up such a substantial following, they took the top spot in the Best Local Band category of this year’s Best of the City readers’ poll.

WE interviewed Beckingham about Hey Ocean!’s success, and the group’s unlikely connection to Gene Simmons of KISS.

What are some of the biggest challenges for up-and-coming bands in Vancouver, and how can you get past them?
Beckingham: We started off just playing locally, in Vancouver and in Victoria, and with the odd Whistler show. And then, about three years ago, we started touring coast to coast in Canada. About two years ago, we played our first show in the States, and since then have toured there a few times, and our visits there are ever-increasing in length and response. To up-and-coming bands in Vancouver, I would say the biggest challenge can be our own misconceptions of the music industry. A lot of bands think that someone will discover them, sign them to a major label, and create a career for them that makes them rich and famous. They’re wrong. This happens rarely, but more and more bands these days are finding success — or at least making a living — being heavily involved in doing their own dirty work. If you believe in the music you’re making and people dig it, then go with it: make a record, and tour as much and as far as it makes sense and you can afford, then make another record and tour even further. It’s hard work sometimes and rewarding other times, but as long as you have a good team and you’re constantly creating and showing people what you do, you’ll be fine.

The band has a pretty strong DIY ethic. How important is creative control to the group’s success?
That depends on one’s idea of success. People have tried to persuade us to make changes to our songwriting and band dynamic that they thought would make us more commercially viable, and we’re always open to listen to people’s advice. If we completely disagree with it, then it goes in the can, and if it seems to make us all go, “Hmmm, interesting,” then it gets talked about. We’ve been a DIY and a LAYG — learn-as-you-go — band from the start.

Gene Simmons came to check you guys out back in July. What’s the best piece of wisdom he offered you?
I think that Gene saw us as a Canadian DIY act that really didn’t know too much about this biz — compared to him, the veteran, anyway — and that wouldn’t be doing anything really significant in the future without his resources. I think he was quite taken aback when we didn’t jump at the offer to open for the likes of U2 within a year if we signed all of our creative power over to him. He did have some good songwriting advice for us to brew over; he was very adamant that we focus on personal pronouns, giving the listener an immediate person with whom to relate. What a guy!

She's Out of My League review

My review of She's Out of My League is online at WestEnder.com

SHE’S OUT OF MY LEAGUE
Starring Jay Baruchel, Alice Eve
Directed by Jim Field Smith

Molly is a hard 10 and Kirk is barely a five, so how could the beautiful girl with the great rack, cool job, and all that hockey knowledge want to bump bits with an awkward, lanky loser who works in airport security? Because She’s Out of My League is the quintessential male fantasy flick, wherein geeks inherit the earth and nail the babes, but with a tidy After-School Special self-esteem hug thrown in for good measure.

Kirk (Jay Baruchel) is invited to meet up with Molly (Alice Eve) after he finds her lost cellphone, and, much to his buddies’ shock, she asks him out on a date. As his friends and family talk incessantly — and often stupidly — about how impossibly hot Molly is, and how the “chasm” on the hotness scale is too wide for Kirk to make the leap, our gawky hero suffers numerous embarrassments and setbacks that culminate in a predictable climax.

The film’s premise, while very 1980s, doesn’t feel completely stale, thanks to some reasonably funny one-liners, a memorable testicles-shaving scene, and the two likeable leads. Eve’s not just a typical pretty face; she has a solid grasp on making Molly feel three-dimensional, no matter how hard the script attempts to reduce her to merely the sum of her body parts. Meanwhile, Baruchel conjures an enjoyable combination of Christian Slater, John Cusack, and Patrick Dempsey, with enough of his own wit added in to make Kirk empathetic even when he’s at his most irritating. She’s Out of My League scores two points for casting, but loses five for predictability, rendering it a victim of its own “Hot or Not?” scoring system. Mostly, it’s just lukewarm. ★★—Andrea Warner

Remember me review

My review of Remember Me appears in Fast Forward Weekly in Calgary.

Remember Me memorably awful

Romance aims for deep meaning, falls far short of the mark

Published March 11, 2010 by Andrea Warner in Film Reviews

Twilight’s Robert Pattinson is a different kind of brooding in the banal romantic drama, Remember Me.

Remember Me

In the indulgent and banal romantic drama Remember Me, Robert Pattinson (Twilight's pretty, pale and brooding vampire heartthrob) proves he's not looking to stretch much beyond his comfort zone. He trades fangs for bleached teeth as Tyler, a young New Yorker with a pulse (barely), who's also pretty, pale and brooding, but for good reason. He's still grieving his brother's suicide, which has essentially turned him into one of those sensitive, tortured douches who quotes Gandhi, writes poetry, creates "funny" and complex filing methods at his bookstore job and audits university classes for no good reason. Well, one good reason: He meets Ally (Emilie de Ravin), a girl with her own demons from witnessing her mother's murder on a subway platform 10 years earlier.

Tyler's grief has manifested itself in numerous clichéd ways: chain-smoking, sleeping late and an inability to abide authority. He's indignantly angry with his workaholic father (a miscast Pierce Brosnan) for not being more loving towards his sister, Caroline (the film's sole bright spot, played by Ruby Jenirs), a 12-year-old wise-child being bullied at school. His short fuse leads to a scuffle with a hardened cop (Chris Cooper), who also happens to be Ally's dad. Tyler allows himself to be coerced into trying to hook up with her as revenge, but ends up falling for her instead.

The script, from first-time writer Will Fetters, is annoying and clunky, repeatedly congratulating itself on its own perceived cleverness. But be assured, it's never clever, not once, to anyone over the age of 12. The dialogue thinks it’s layered with subtext and philosophical grandeur, but is ultimately laughable. Sample exchange: Ally: "I don't date sociology majors." Tyler: "Lucky for you I'm undecided." Ally: "'Bout what?" Tyler: (pause and meaningful stare) "Everything."

The dialogue, though, isn't even the worst part. Nor is having to listen to Pattinson (English), de Ravin (Australian) and Brosnan (Irish) rock-climb the slippery surfaces of their American accents. It's the slow-motion wreck that happens within the last 30 minutes of the film as you realize for sure, without a shadow of a doubt, where this is all heading. The climax aims for deep meaning and subtle contemplation, but settles for grossly obvious and emotionally ineffective, appealing only to Twihards and young girls who cut themselves. Remember Me proves impossible to forget, but for all the wrong reasons.

Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt

Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! is the best name ever for whatever it is these folks do.

Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! couldn't be more ecstatic

Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'

by Andrea Warner

• provided
• The lovable Neil Fridd, in full bliss with the Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt!

The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt!

Just when it seems bands with punctuation marks had gone the way of the Aughts, Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! comes barreling into pop consciousness. The assembly of hipsters — the brainchild of de facto leader, 22-year-old Neil Fridd — aren't reinvigorating synth-pop or indie-rock, but rather marrying the two with avant garde, open-arm party spectacles.

The N.Y.C.-based collective doesn't even have an album to its credit yet, but they've already been profiled in The New York Times, thanks to a reputation for hosting body-shaking, beat-breaking throw-downs. It's elevated by their "just fucking do it!" joie de vivre and a propensity for flamboyant costumes that seem to come straight from the world's most awesome tickle-trunk.

"We show up with a billion lights, bags of costumes, 60 or more light sabers, and really good songs," Fridd says. "We grab mics and say, 'We're going to throw an awesome dance party, run around, and scream about how fucking cool it is to finally kiss that person you've been crushing on for months.' There is nothing better than partying until five in the morning when you have to be up for work at seven, and how your friends are so fucking great."

The group's hard-partying, love everyone, dance 'n' thrash vibe doesn't necessarily translate on their upcoming debut LP, I Love You. I Love You. I Love You And I'm In Love With You. Have An Awesome Day! Have The Best Day Of Your Life!. The loose vibe of most of the tracks calls to mind a drug-fueled campfire singalong, particularly the casually catchy and nostalgic "Snowday," which boasts some nifty banjo playing and periodic vocal bursts from the backing singers.

While it makes sense to release an LP so people who can't go to shows have something other than grainy YouTube videos to capture some aspect of Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt!, the point of this group is to bring together hundreds of young and old bodies, squeezing, sweating, and congealing into one giant, gyrating fire hazard. If someone is dressed like a disco unicorn, all the better.

Basia Bulat

My interview with Basia Bulat is online at WestEnder.com

Basia Bulat. Autoharp not pictured.

Credit: supplied

By Andrea Warner

Basia Bulat wasn’t looking to become the face of the autoharp when she released her debut disc in 2005. Made mostly for friends, the self-titled EP featured a variety of stringed instruments, but most people seemed to immediately latch onto her affection for the archaic, seldom-seem zither, thanks in large part to her tendency to pose with one in photographs. The EP caught the attention of legendary U.K. indie label Rough Trade, which, in 2007, released Bulat’s critically acclaimed (and Polaris-nominated) full-length album, Oh My Darling.

Three years later, Bulat’s just released her much-anticipated follow-up, Heart of My Own, another sweetly charming strum-fest that showcases the Ontario native’s strong vocals (reminiscent of Natalie Merchant), and also features subtle detours into rock and roots territory, with plenty of drums, banjo, and violin. And, of course, there’s still the autoharp, which is never far from any conversation about Bulat.

Bulat spoke to WE over the phone last week, while the 2010 Winter Games were still in full swing.

How’s your day going?
I was watching the Olympics. It was great.

Do you have a favourite event?
I’m a little bit partial to watching snowboarding and half-pipe events, just because I used to snowboard. I actually used to teach snowboarding. (Laughs) Yeah, little known fact. I haven’t been in three or four years — it’s shameful, really. It was in high school when I was teaching.

So, it was snowboard and then autoharp.
(Laughs) Yeah. It was a logical progression.

Were you surprised by how well your album was received in this world of Nickelback appreciation, considering it features a lot of ukulele and autoharp?
I wasn’t really surprised because of the instruments I was playing, because I was also playing guitar and piano. I think my first record — I don’t think you can plan for people or expect people to like your music. You just have to be really grateful if they do. It’s not necessarily something where I was going, “Oh, I’m so shocked.” I was just really humbled by it. And for it to mean something to people, that’s a really big thing; that’s not something I would take for granted. I’ve had people come up to me after a show and tell me Oh My Darling has helped them through a really tough time, or different songs have helped them through this or that, and so that’s incredibly moving for me, because that’s what music does for me. To be able to do that for someone else is really incredible.

What’s been the steepest learning curve for you between Oh My Darling and Heart of My Own?
Oh, there are so many learning curves! (Laughs) I don’t think I’ve had it harder than anyone else. I think I work really hard, and I know a lot of artists and musicians who do, and I think a lot of people — it’s also the kind of thing you go through in any career, in a lot of ways. You try to make sure that what you’re doing is being true to yourself and feeling confident in your work. There were certain things for me: for example, I hadn’t played solo until my record had come out. I had this opportunity and it was necessary that I played solo; I was opening for Wintersleep on the East Coast, and I had a band for me for all these gigs, but I had to play this one solo show in Newfoundland. I was terrified because it was 1,000 people! (Laughs) But it’s a testament to how kind and generous the people of Newfoundland are; they made it seem like we were all in a living room together — it was so much fun.

What are the biggest differences between creating music on the road versus a space you call your home?
I still kind of feel like I’m making songs for my friends and myself, so, in some ways, that hasn’t changed. I think a lot of touring — it’s not at home, but just writing songs and performing feels like I’m at home. (Laughs) If that makes any sense. I’m just always writing, so I’m really lucky that I just keep having ideas for songs. I’m the kind of writer that, as soon as an idea comes into my head, I have to try and find a way to get it out, regardless of wherever I am.

Basia Bulat plays St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th), 7 pm. Tickets $16 from TicketWeb.ca

Cop Out review

My review of Kevin Smith's new flick, Cop Out. You can also read last year's interview with Kevin Smith here.

COP OUT

Starring Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan
, Seann William Scott
Directed by Kevin Smith
Fans of lengthy, funny riffs on taking a crap, and other outbursts that straddle the Venn diagram intersections of silly, stupid, and wry, will find plenty of laugh-out-loud moments in Cop Out, Kevin Smith's ode to buddy-cop comedies. Those who aren't on board with shit-talking (literally) or don't have appreciate the humour of 12-year-old boys probably won't be charmed by a movie originally titled A Couple of Dicks.

Jimmy (Willis) and Paul (Morgan) are NYPD veterans, celebrating nine years as partners. In pitch-perfect casting, Willis is the relatively competent tough guy playing straight man to Morgan's clueless, puppy-dog mania. The pair are suspended without pay after botching a bust and letting a drug kingpin get away, leaving Jimmy in the lurch and on the hook for his daughter's dream wedding. (Smith fans will appreciate Jason Lee's extended cameo as the rich, evil step-father.) Through a series of appropriately convoluted coincidences, Jimmy and Paul are saddled with Dave (Seann William Scott), an infantile, drug-addicted parkour aficionado who embroils the duo in a Mexican gang leader's attempts to expand his drug empire.

There are also plenty of side plots, including a rival pair of dumb cops, the kidnapping of the aforementioned gang leader's feisty mistress, and Paul's insecurities (who knows why or where they come from) about his wife's faithfulness — or lack thereof. The script, by brothers Robb and Mark Cullen, is an ADD mishmash: Some of the subplots are wacky enough to entertain, but others fall remarkably flat, making the film drag rather than flow.

Cop Out is Smith's first time directing a script he didn't write, and unfortunately, his weaknesses as a filmmaker and editor are fully exposed. Cuts are choppy and chase scenes clumsily staged and/or poorly lit. On the bright side, Smith knows how to stage a shoot out, and he knows what's funny to his fans. The film's saving grace are its three stars, whose hilariously offhand scenes often feel gloriously improvised. Ultimately, Cop Out feels like a debut rather than the work of an established filmmaker, but perhaps this is Smith's first step towards breaking free of his arrested development. 

★★—Andrea Warner

How to Raise a Creative Kid

My article appears in the March issue of Today's Parent!

Raise a Creative Kid

Even If You're Not!

Andrea Warner

You may be a computer whiz, a company president or a gregarious soccer coach. So why do you feel like you’re all thumbs when it comes to doodling with your five-year-old daughter?

Breathe easy, left brainers. Attitude is everything when it comes to creativity. At work, there’s plenty of pressure to make things picture-perfect on the first try. But when you’re exploring the arts with your kids, the fun is in the freedom to colour outside the lines. And remember: Kids thrive when they get to play teacher. So let down your guard when you don’t know what to do and let your little one take the lead.

To get you and your kids clicking creatively, try these easy-as-pie ideas.

Just dance

Got two left feet? Relax and tune in to the tunes. “It’s all about the movement,” says Kay Huang-Barnes, a creative movement instructor at Vancouver’s Arts Umbrella, “so turn on some music and walk, crawl, skip or run to the beat.”

• Give in to your animal instincts and pretend you’re different creatures in the jungle or on a farm. Do the silliest move you can think of, and then dare your child to top you.

• Work together to make up your own dances to favourite songs, or mimic the moves from old movies. Little ones will find inspiration in plenty of old Disney films, while preteens might enjoy 1980s movies like Flashdance and Footloose.

• Explore different dance styles and music. Surf the Internet to find instructional dance videos, e-books and guides that cover everything from sock hop classics to ballet basics. YouTube is a great resource to see real people breaking down the moves.

• If inhibitions are hampering the hoofing, practise alone before unveiling your footwork in front of an audience. Turn on music while you’re cleaning or blast a childhood favourite while you’re running errands in the car.

The write stuff

When “Once upon a time” won’t quite do, here are a couple of easy prompts to get younger children started on a story.

Prompt 1: Outside the window, the moon looked smaller than the nail on my pinky finger. I could hear the wind blowing against the side of my house. Then suddenly a THUD!

Prompt 2: From far away, he looked almost exactly like the other rabbits: two long ears, two pink eyes, one scrunched-up nose. But up close, something was very different. Something gleaming white was sticking out of his mouth.

• Have a child who can’t quite write yet? Invite her to tell you a story while you write down her words. Ask follow-up questions: “What does the forest look and smell like? Who lives in the forest? When is the story taking place?”

• For older kids, poetry might be the way to expand on their writing skills while expressing themselves differently. Together, you can choose five words randomly from the dictionary. Use those five words to craft a poem at least 10 lines long. Write one poem that rhymes and one that doesn’t.

So dramatic

Got a mini Meryl Streep on your hands? Stage a play together, suggests Jennifer Martin, artistic director of the Canadian Children’s Theatre Company.

• Martin recommends acting out favourite books to encourage a child who’s been bitten by the acting bug. Parents can take part by volunteering to act in the play, coming up with funny or realistic voices, and brainstorming on the places and settings.

• Keep a dress-up box with clothes and accessories collected from around the house, hand-me-downs from other family members or old Halloween costumes. A family talent show is a terrific standby for Sunday evenings.

• Improvisation is a great way to spark your creativity. Dress up and decide how you want the play to work. Do you want to improvise everything or would you like to agree on a setting, a time or the relationship between your characters?

• Write your own play. Work with your child to decide what kind of story to tell and how many characters will be in the play, and take turns writing the dialogue and the stage directions.

A show of hands

Kids love a great puppet show, and making puppets of different sizes and shapes can provide tons of entertainment well before the curtain rises.

• Finger puppets, sock puppets and hand puppets can be made with old gloves or socks, construction or recycled wrapping paper, markers, paints, pipe cleaners, string, glitter and plenty of glue. Spend time developing characters and building up the puppets’ personalities with decorations and details, such as freckles, glasses, funny ears or crazy hair.

• Transform a cardboard box into a little stage and help your child come up with stories.

Building blocks of life

• If your youngster is interested in building, sculpture and structures, trade the pens and paper for Lego and other building blocks. But don’t limit your child to conventional materials: Try using rocks, seashells, Popsicle sticks or playing cards.

• Use magazine cut-outs or glue pictures onto cardboard boxes and let your child craft sculptures of his own making. It’s also surprisingly easy to make your own modelling clay — kinderinfo.com has a great recipe, but you can google “homemade modelling clay” to find one that works for you.

Keep the beat!

It’s pretty simple advice, but encouraging your child to sing along to favourite songs might be just the nudge he needs to make music his friend. Even if your voice isn’t pitch perfect, shake off your self-consciousness as much as possible by singing along to some of your old faves or some simple kid-friendly classics like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

• Is reality TV more your style? Create your own “living room idol” with karaoke CDs or video games like SingStar. Singing along to CDs can become a full concert experience if you and your young star improvise costumes and instruments (an overturned pot makes a great drum, and a tennis racket stands in nicely for a guitar).

• Francis Balodis, founder and international director of Music for Young Children in Kanata, Ont., urges parents to make learning an instrument more exciting than just sitting down at a piano to practise. Turn note naming into a game, and keep a selection of rhythm instruments around to help keep the beat while listening to music. Making rhythm instruments is as easy as pouring uncooked rice into an empty tin can or plastic container.

Just picture it

• Let your child go wild with a camera! If you’re dealing with a preschooler, consider handing over a disposable camera rather than your family’s digital. Then have him photograph his world.

• Do a photography scavenger hunt: Take a picture of what love looks like, your favourite animal, a place you think would be cool to live, something that makes you smile, something that scares you. Then compare images and talk about your pictures. You may even want to make prints and frame your faves.

• Ask your little one to take pictures of family and friends, letting her play with close-ups and faraway shots, and then go through and choose your favourites together.

• Scrapbooking sometimes gets a bad rap, but it’s a great opportunity to go through old family photos with your child and think of interesting ways to group them. Have your child write little stories to accompany different memories from family vacations.

Colouring outside the lines

• The pros all agree: Keep a craft box stocked with paper, crayons, fingerpaints and pencils. Collect scraps of paper, magazines or gift wrap and bows from birthdays to add variety to your craft box.

• Don’t confine yourself to the kitchen table. Head outside with a pad of paper and some markers or paints, and see where your kid’s creativity takes him. Or look at different types of artwork and styles — online, at the library or the museum. Don’t forget to bring your own supplies should creativity strike!

A final thought: Christian Monks, who uses art therapy in his job as a clinical counsellor at Vancouver’s Cameray Child and Family Services, notes that some parents expect a finished product that looks “perfect.” He advises turning those expectations upside down. “Maybe to get things started, a parent and child agree to make a messy picture,” Monks says. “Creativity is not about the end, but finding delight in the process.”

The frustration station

Mini-meltdowns can derail the creative process, so if your little one starts getting frustrated because her picture isn’t turning out the way she wanted, or he can’t master the moonwalk, here are a few tips to defuse, soothe and move on:

• Remind your child that practice is the way to improve; just as with skills like catching or throwing, you need to keep drawing or dancing to get better.

• Make sure you join in and show your child your own effort, making it clear that there are plenty of different ways to make something special and that everyone has something unique to offer.

• Take a break, walk away for a little while, and then slowly make your way back to your art project.

Ideas online

• kinderart.com Provides free exercises and tips for little ones.
• beaverbrookartgallery.org Check out the Kids Zone games, entertainment and arts-related activities for family fun.
• kidica.com Crafts, music and arts activities for all ages.

Parachute Musical

My preview of Parachute Musical is in this week's Charleston City Paper.

The origins of Parachute Musical's pop

Flying and drifting ... happily disjointed

by Andrea Warner

• Devoid of the typical Nashville style: the rascally Parachute Musical

Parachute Musical

From internal bust-ups to bankruptcy, most fledgling indie-rock bands experience varying degrees of struggle, but few stack the decks against themselves quite so much as the Nashville-based quartet Parachute Musical.

First, the name. Though hipster-friendly, it's already closely associated with something entirely different — New Zealand's annual mammoth Christian music festival.

Secondly, they debuted with a self-titled album in 2003. Their follow-up, Everything is Working Out Fine in Some Town, wasn't released until 2008. Five years in the indie-rock world is the equivalent of Guns 'N Roses' Chinese Democracy. Even a band's most ardent fans will find ways to fill that kind of gap, making it harder to capitalize on any kind of initial success.

Thirdly, they're just four guys making piano-fronted, orchestral-influenced, indie-rock. Josh Foster handles vocals and piano, with Tom Gilbert on guitar, Andrew Samples on bass, and Ben Jacoby on drums.

Fourth, Parachute Musical have too many influences, so there's no consistent listener experience from song to song. Will you get a lush orchestral arrangement or salsa-inspired romp-pop? It's like throwing a dart at a wheel.

In the band's favor, though, is a solid foundation of genuine talent. PM's 2008 release took more than a year to record, and featured Foster writing orchestral arrangements, recruiting and incorporating a 20-piece ensemble, and utilizing a seven-piece brass section. The album's title track is truly stunning and beautifully original (that 20-piece orchestra doesn't hurt). Throughout PM's small catalog, Foster's voice is sweet and familiar, but occasionally generic. However, his passion behind the piano charms, particularly on the moody intro to "One More Song." The soaring, cabaret-influenced "Instead" builds to a crescendo fit for a Rockette. Almost every song samples a different genre.

Parachute Musical is a young band with big dreams and plenty of easy-going, multi-purpose pop songs with cross-generational appeal — plus a satisfying smattering of incredibly brilliant songs that indicate huge ambition, pretty much guaranteeing theirs will be a show unlike any you've seen before.

YACHT concert review

My review of last night's YACHT show is online at Exclaim.ca and features a photo by Carlos Hernandez Fisher.

YACHT / Bobby Birdman / Fine Fist The Biltmore, Vancouver, BC February 19 By Andrea Warner An evening with Jonah Bechtolt's beat-driven, electro-pop project YACHT ensures two things: some weird-sounding, super-cool shit and a sweat-soaked dance party. And that's when he was simply a solo act. At the Canadian kick-off for the band's cross-country tour, Bechtolt shared the stage with Claire L. Evans, YACHT's relatively recent new addition, a drummer and a guitarist. Bechtolt's usual mode of laptop 'n' beats delivery was still at hand, but the addition of live instruments and layered voices gave YACHT's sound surprising depth and urgency, helped further along by Evans sharing lead vocals throughout. Evans revealed that it was only the second time all four musicians had played together as a band, and their own excitement was palpable, as the quartet sang, danced and occasionally crowd-surfed through an hour-long set. That energy translated musically, too, particularly in "The Afterlife," which evolved into an all-out jam session, something previous YACHT shows could never do since there weren't any other collaborators. Every song seemed to have more movement as well, because of the live accompaniment, particularly on the epic "It's Boring/You Can Live Anywhere That You Want," which owes a debt to Talking Heads. The second opening act, Bobby Birdman, was, like YACHT, backed by laptop beats (and a live drummer), but with a voice like a lounge singer from the '60s, it seems the charismatic lead singer is perpetually stuck in some episode of Quantum Leap. But, there's something awesome about his occasional Tom Jones-esque delivery paired with futuristic blips, deep grooves and staccato rhythms. "Victory at Sea" is catchy and drum driven, and he invited Vancouver-based openers Fine Mist on stage to sing his optimism anthem "I Will Come Again," which the duo had covered in their own set. Fine Mist's opening set felt a little off-kilter. That said, the duo's brand of haphazard electro-pop is charming and fun, and offers a perfect showcase for Meghan McDonald's impressive '80s-ladies power pipes. Her voice soars with a sexy husk and she's damn funny, offering up delicious sound bites no one asked for, like her declaration that she and band-mate Jay Arner aren't a couple, since "he's a eunuch and I'm celibate. Like Morrissey."

Woody Harrelson interview

My interview with Woody Harrelson and Defendor writer-director Peter Stebbings.

Woody Harrelson (left) and writer-director Peter Stebbings on the Ontario set of the vigilante comedy, Defendor.

Credit: supplied

Woody Harrelson heads north with ‘Defendor’

Posted By: Andrea Warner

02/17/2010 12:00 AM

Woody Harrelson is experiencing a career resurrection to rival that of any comic-book superhero. After shirking Hollywood for a number of years, he returned in 2009, seemingly more prolific and popular than ever, appearing in three films — Zombieland, 2012, and The Messenger — that were released within just a few months of each other. The latter title (which opened in limited release in the U.S. in November; it opens in Canada on February 26) scored him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and he’s got two more movies scheduled for later this year.

But before he walks down the red carpet (and possibly up to the podium) at the Oscars, Harrelson will be hitting the screen again this week with Defendor (opening Friday, February 19), director Peter Stebbings’s small, quirky, Canadian-made vigilante flick,

Harrelson admits the last few months have been a whirlwind compared to the previous six years, which were spent mostly as a family man and an activist, holed up in a self-sustainable community in Maui, hanging out with famous neighbours like Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson. Speaking exclusively with WE during a much-needed break at his Hawaiian home, he says he’s a bit awed to have been welcomed back with open arms.

“I’m really happy with how everything’s going,” Harrelson says with a laugh. “I feel like I took a period of time off, and it takes a long time to really get back in the groove. I made several movies that I thought were fantastic that nobody saw. It’s one thing if the movie sucks — you would expect or hope that people don’t go see it. But when it’s good, you really hope people see it. I feel that way about Defendor.”

A confident directorial debut from Vancouver-based actor Stebbings, Defendor follows Arthur Poppington (Harrelson), a man with learning disabilities who’s obsessed with superhero mythology. Abandoned as a young boy by his addict mother, Arthur grows up vowing revenge against drug pushers and crime bosses. He develops his vigilante persona, Defendor, to help keep the streets safe at night. In the process, he rescues Kat (Kat Dennings), a young prostitute with a drug habit whose supplier is a crooked cop.

Anybody who watched Harrelson make a name for himself on TV’s Cheers knows the actor has a knack for playing an affable and easily confused man-child. But in Defendor, his approach to portraying Arthur is masterfully restrained. Through a series of subtle physical transformations (a jutted jaw, a slightly furrowed brow, the cadence of his voice), Harrelson makes Arthur a fully-realized person — and he’s the first to confess it wasn’t easy.

“I was really nervous about it, because just before starting, we focused in on one type of malady: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,” Harrelson says. “I feel like one of the most common things about people with FAS is they’re most childlike. I could have tried to go a little further with it — you know, tried to talk funny or some weird shit like that — but I thought it was better to be more subtle. But I was so nervous. I didn’t wanna seem fake. I guess that’s every actor’s worst fear: being phony.”

“The whole movie hinges on his performance,” says Stebbings. “If there’s a false note there, we’re sunk. We did a lot of research into FAS: I set him up with doctors and a guy with FAS; we spent a lot of time in dive bars, because this was the world Arthur comes from; we shopped for his clothes at Value Village and he picked many of the clothes.

“We had about a week’s worth of rehearsal when he came to town. The night before we went to shoot, he invited me to his place, and he said, ‘I’ve never been more unsure about what I’m going to do than on your [movie], and I’ve never been more okay with that.’ So, he went muckdiving, you know? He just kinda leaped off the bridge and he nailed it.”

For all its dark subject matter, though, Defendor has plenty of hilarious and heartfelt moments, made that much more authentic thanks to Stebbings’s knack for getting the small details right. Arthur’s superhero fixation is executed perfectly, from his tricked-out truck to his homemade uniform, it’s a fully-realized manifestation of creativity conceived within realistic limitations — something Stebbings is familiar with firsthand.

The film was shot in just 20 days, for about three million dollars — a shoestring budget compared to Hollywood fare. Remarkably, Defendor is visually impressive, far exceeding the expectations that usually greet a low-budget Canadian feature. It’s an unusual achievement for a first-time director, but Stebbings stopped at nothing to ensure his film would be a success. That included courting his high-profile actors himself.

“Sandra Oh [who plays Arthur’s therapist] turned me down twice,” Stebbings recalls, laughing. “I sent it to her manager; she turned it down. I brought it up again; she turned it down. Finally, I sort of wrote her a personal letter and offered to sweeten the pot with a handbag of her choice, because I’d read somewhere that she liked handbags, and I think all that did was make her giggle and make her manager giggle, but it kept the dialogue open, so I gave her a more comprehensive overview of how I would treat those scenes. She’s a busy girl at Grey’s Anatomy; she came up on the weekend and flew out on Sunday night. We shot all those scenes in two days.”

Harrelson’s role was originally offered to an unnamed actor who hemmed and hawed before finally backing out. Harrelson’s agent read the script, loved it, and encouraged Stebbings to pitch his client directly.

“[Harreleson and I] played pool in L.A. when he was in town, and hung out and ate some funny-lookin’ food — he has a very specific diet — and I let him beat me at pool for a couple of games,” Stebbings jokes. “His agent said, ‘The great thing about Woody is he likes everybody, the bad thing about Woody is he likes everybody.’ He really wanted to make sure he wasn’t getting in bed with a charlatan. And he said to me, after he met me, ‘You know, when I first saw you, you looked like a serious dude. And I knew right away that you’d have it together.’ Getting him on board really set things in motion.”

But filming wasn’t easy, even if it was blissfully short. The physical challenges are still fresh in Harrelson’s mind, and not simply because his character gets beaten up — a lot. Defendor was shot on location in Hamilton, Ontario, in sub-zero temperatures, which was like a punch to the gut for the avowed environmentalist who lives in a tropical climate.

“You ever been to Hamilton? Don’t bother,” Harrelson says. “It used to be this gloriously beautiful place where Cary Grant and different people would come up to vacation, and then the steel [industry] came in and turned it into what it still is today, which is one of the most polluted places I’ve ever been. Just smoke constantly belching into the atmosphere; you’re just breathing in grey, acrid nastiness constantly. The most challenging thing was, one day we were shooting in this alley. It was incredibly cold, and I had to rest my head in this puddle of the nastiest looking — I don’t know what was in this puddle. It’s not even funny. Then, when I saw it on the screen, you don’t even see it!”

Wolfman review

My review of The Wolfman is online at WestEnder.com

THE WOLFMAN
Starring Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt

Directed by Joe Johnston
With pop culture still saturated by the ridiculous proliferation of Twilight's glittery abstinence vampires versus juiced-up, muscled teens-cum-werewolves, the idea of an old fashioned, grown-up, Gothic horror flick tackling lycanthropy mythology seemed promising. Instead, we're offered Wolfman, a limp retread of every tired werewolf cliché, relying on only a spindle-thin father-son conflict as its central source of tension.

After a lengthy absence, Lawrence Talbot (Benicio del Toro, struggling with an American accent) is summoned home by his brother's fiancée, Gwen (Emily Blunt), who confesses that his brother, Ben, has been missing for weeks. When Ben’s body is found, Lawrence promises the grieving Gwen he'll stay until he discovers what happened. To do so, he must confront his father, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), an eccentric who speaks in vague threats and pseudo-loving warnings, and with whom he shares a mysterious past. As the townsfolk's whispers grow louder about "a curse" and "the gypsies" and "stocking up on silver bullets," the film unfolds as one would expect: Lawrence ends up bearing the mark of the beast and repeatedly, viciously morphs into a snarling, hairy monster under the glow of the full moon. The mystery (scarcely a mystery at all) is who cursed Lawrence and how can it be stopped?

During production, the film was hampered by numerous difficulties (two directors, studio rewrites, different endings) and multiple, disconnected visions abound. Straight-up horror? Cheesy gore with taut, self-aware humour? A bodice-busting, romantic mystery with a hint of terror? A psychological thriller about redemption? Any one of these directions could have worked, but Wolfman instead offers a disorienting and diluted blend of all four — with some truly terrible acting from established Oscar winners thrown in for good measure.

All that aside, the film's biggest disappointment comes in flatly refusing to build up the all-important suspense. Unforgivably, the film reveals what the werewolf looks like before the opening credits, making Wolfman the cinematic equivalent of premature ejaculation. ★—Andrea Warner

Tying a Different Kind of Knot

My article on BDSM appears in this week's WE. It's pretty brief, and I had a lot of great interviews, so expect to see some follow up on this blog in the coming weeks when I have time to write a couple follow-up segments.

BDSM is emerging from the underground, revealing an all-inclusive community where sex and respect go hand in glove

Credit: supplied

MODERN LOVE: Tying a different kind of knot

Posted By: Andrea Warner

02/10/2010 12:00 AM

Soft music and spooning might be part of your perfect Valentine’s plans, but a growing number of consenting adults are adding a little kink to their romantic routines. From a few playful swats on the bottom to playing doctor and nurse, more and more people are opening up about their desires and needs, redefining conventional notions of sex, and in some cases, loving, respectful relationships.

The murky mixing of pleasure and pain is often a contentious issue for even the most liberal-minded people. Possibly the final frontier in taboo, bondage, discipline, and sado-masochism (BDSM) has evolved into a legitimate lifestyle complete with social functions, education, clothing, and language. Vancouver’s own BDSM culture is thriving, with a growing community (arguably the city’s only genuinely all-inclusive community) at the forefront of changing the city’s attitudes about sex.

Peter Tupper, director at large and communications coordinator for Metro Vancouver Kink, is one of a handful of people publicly “out” about his involvement in the BDSM community. He defines BDSM as a set of sexual practices involving dominance and submission role play, and other forms of erotic stimulation including confinement, impact, and a variety of other sensations. He’s well aware that to many people BDSM sounds dangerous and dirty, and he’s interested in creating more honest dialogues about sexual needs.

“Some people are wary about mixing sex and violence and they’re frightened by the connection,” Tupper says. “I think they don’t understand that often in BDSM, that’s taken in the context of a relationship of mutual trust and respect. There’s a very strong focus on the ethics of behaviour, of looking after the person you’re with, of negotiating beforehand, respecting their physical, psychological, emotional limits. There’s no standard script for a sexual encounter. You meet with somebody, you negotiate your limits, work out his or her kinks, and nothing’s taken for granted. That formalized negotiation—I think that’s something that “vanilla” people can learn from. Maybe their sexual relationships can run a little smoother through that negotiation.”

Jennifer, a sex educator and founder of Libido Events, has been a part of the BDSM community for 12 years. Her introduction came at a time when the community existed in relative secrecy, an underground assembly where you had to know someone involved in the scene to get invited to an event. She accidentally stumbled onto the fledgling community after buying a pair of stilettos to fulfill a boyfriend’s fantasy. The sales-lady slipped a leaflet about a party into the bottom of her bag, promising that “all the other girls that bought those kind of shoes would be there.”

“Implying somehow she knew what we were into, when we didn’t even know what we were into,” Jennifer recalls. “We ended up walking in the door of a BDSM party. I was flabbergasted. Within three parties, my partner realized it wasn’t the place for him, and within three parties I’d realized I’d found a home. The home wasn’t within the party, but within the community, finding like-minded individuals. They didn’t have to share the exact interests I had, but they were open-minded enough to not push people away based on what their interests were.”

An indicator of how the BDSM community has flourished is indicative at the bi-weekly Sin City Fetish parties. Organizer Mr. Dark has seen attendance at his Club 23 West events grow over the last nine years from about 150 people to 500 people, with some parties boast ing a crowd of more than 1,000.

“Vancouver is blessed with a more open-minded view of sexuality,” Dark says. “It’s become more mainstream, as many people didn’t even know they were kinky. A few years back I had a make up artist that I worked with on a film with tell me she wasn’t into kinky stuff, but then admitted that she liked to be spanked. Well honey, congratulations, that’s kinky!”

Dave Toxik (a pseudonym), an active member of the community, also sees the makings of a social shift.

“Anyone who deviates from supposed normalcy is often looked at as an outsider, as weird or wrong,” Toxik says. “That, and the guilt that is often stapled onto sexuality in North America, give you a Frankenstein’s monster of sorts — something shocking or to be mocked. But, there are columnists, TV shows, and even the Taboo sex show, that are normalizing various aspects of sexuality, including kink. So while there is still the stigma and shame associated with kink, there are segments of society trying to move toward a more neutral understanding of what it is...I can honestly say I have never met as open-minded, interesting, and fascinating people as I have in the BDSM community.”

For more information, workshops, and meet-up opportunities:

Metro Vancouver Kink
Libido Events
Gothic British Columbia
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Hal Willner's Neil Young Project w/ Joan as Policewoman

My interview with Joan as Policewoman appears in this week's WE.

Under the watchful eye of a Policewoman: Joan Wasser honours a Canadian icon for the second time with the Neil Young Project.

Credit: supplied

Indie-rocker staying Young at heart

Posted By: Andrea Warner

02/10/2010 9:00 AM

The last time producer and Saturday Night Live music supervisor Hal Willner and singer-songwriter Joan Wasser (aka Joan as Policewoman) worked together on the Neil Young Project was 2004. A sprawling tribute to the iconic Canadian singer-songwriter, the touring series featured over 30 musicians performing for nearly three hours. On February 18-19, the Cultural Olympiad is presenting a remount of this ambitious effort featuring a hodge-podge of indie-rock all-stars that includes Lou Reed, Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene, Iron and Wine, and Joan as Policewoman, who’s back as both a performer and the event’s musical director. WE spoke with Wasser about doing it all again, six years older and six years wiser.

How did you get originally get involved with the Neil Young Project?
Hal asked me to be the musical director. I’d known him for a number of years before that and I like him as a friend and appreciate him as a producer and curator.

It’s six years later. Is this latest incarnation an evolution or is it a similar beast to what you put on back then?
Honestly, that original show almost killed me. [Laughs] It was definitely the most work of anything I’d ever done, and that’s saying a lot, because I think a lot of people would probably call me a workaholic or something of that sort. At that point it was a 10-piece band and I got to choose the band, so that was great. I got to work with people that I love. But then you’re also dealing with about 30 singers and the prep time is very small in relation to the amount of work you have to get done. It was fantastic doing it, it was just a gigantic amount of work. It’s going to be a little bit of a different beast this time.

Has Neil Young given you any thoughts about the Project?
He has absolutely nothing to do with it and we’ve had no contact with him, so he cannot be blamed for anything that happens with the show. [Laughs]

Your own biography has featured collaborations with a number of amazing musicians, so this seems right up your alley.
I feel like Hal did really choose me to do this because of my background. I grew up playing in bands as a musician only, as a violin player. I studied it classically and played in an orchestra and chamber music. It was a really natural transition to start playing in rock and pop bands, and then my name kind of got out there as people wanted to have violin on their records. But then I started writing my own songs and became the leader of my band, and I really just love playing with other people. I really work with each singer to make each arrangement of the song something everyone’s really happy with. I have no interest of pushing my own ideas on a song someone else will be singing, unless they want my ideas. I also understand the discomfort of jumping up with a band you don’t know.

What are the different things that you bring to the project now, versus then?
I’d done about six months of touring solo, and I had a trio in New York City, but since then I’ve been touring pretty much non-stop with my own music since 2006. I just got home today from doing some shows, then I leave on Tuesday for Europe, and then I go to Ethiopia to do this project that Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz) asked me to do called Africa Express, then Vancouver. But I’ve just been on the go since [the Neil Young Project] happened, so I’m actually really looking forward to doing it and finding out for myself how it’s going to change. I certainly don’t have the anxiety that I had originally, because I know much more. Things happen the way they want, so I’m looking forward to approaching it in a more flowing manner.

Nouvelle Vague

My story on Nouvelle Vague is in this week's WE.

Tongue in cheek, but totally serious: Nouvelle Vague’s bossa-nova-style interpretations of ’80s New Wave songs have won them the respect of their heroes — as well as the producers of Glee.

French-fried cover versions

The history of Nouvelle Vague is the stuff of indie-rock legend: French band evolves from kitschy farce to established cult phenoms by peddling songs that are almost exclusively bossa nova-style covers of New Wave chestnuts, all thanks to the imaginations of Nouvelle Vague’s co-founders, Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux. Their knack for picking nostalgic favourites, coupled with the wise decision to have a variety of velvet-voiced French chanteuses helm each interpretation, has seemingly filled a pop-culture void. The band’s new album, 3, is another cheeky collection featuring classics like Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun” and a bevy of duets with famous names, like Echo & the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch and Martin Gore of Depeche Mode.

Collin spoke (in a charmingly thick French accent) with WE from the band’s tour bus about choosing covers, commercial success, and cashing in.

How do you choose which songs to cover?
Marc Collin: It’s quite easy. We were really already big fans of New Wave, so we were just trying to remember which songs we were really into. Sometimes songs are completely unknown in some countries. For example, “I Melt With You” is completely unknown in France, and we just knew this song because we were completely into this movement, but it was a huge hit in America. But we don’t really think about that, because we don’t really know what’s a huge hit in America. [Laughs] We just try to choose what we like.

As a composer and producer, do you feel there are certain requirements a song has to have for you to want to cover it?
It’s difficult to answer. [Sighs] I can say there has to be a strong melody, but how? I think we did something good on “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” from Bauhaus, or “Human Fly” from the Cramps, which obviously are not great melodies, so it’s also mood or something in the lyrics. Something that just inspires some ideas to create something different.

Your reinventions are getting a lot of commercial attention, such as the TV show Glee, which used your cover of “Dancing with Myself.” Does it feel strange for you?
[Laughs] It’s what we want. Yeah, for sure. The idea at the beginning was just to please us, but as soon as it can have a commercial success, for sure. Actually, there’s a lot of people who come to the show who don’t know the originals; they are just discovering the songs like this, so it’s a good way to make people discover these singers and this musical movement. And the money that comes from this, it’s good for sure.

Do the collaborations on 3 signal that you have more credibility and are legitimized as a band?
I hope so, yeah. What we have created is really unique, in a way, because we are — and were at the beginning — only a cover band, but somehow we have this credibility that any indie band might get. We get a lot of press, we’re appreciated by the original bands, and we are playing in these big rock festivals like Glastonbury!

My review of Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe, at the Arts Club as part of the PuSh Festival.

The life of the famous horror author gets a Goth treatment in Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allen Poe.

Credit: Supplied

Nevermore

If I were 20 years old and still had my lip piercing, Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allen Poe, would be everything I could hope for in a musical: macabre lyrics, Victorian-era-inspired Goth fashions, and spooky, sing-song chanting. Sadly, I’m a decade older, so, while entertaining, Nevermore’s a one-trick pony that can’t sustain its momentum beyond the first act.

The creation of Edmonton-based Catalyst Theatre, which mined similar territory at its 2008 PuSh Festival appearance with an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Nevermore delves into the sad life of Poe, the legendary author of brilliantly horrific short stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and the epic horror poem, “The Raven.” Based mostly on actual events, narrators take Poe (Scott Schpeley) and the audience through the signposts of his tragic existence — and there is a ridiculous abundance of tragedy, because almost everyone Poe ever loved died or abandoned him. This means the story stops and starts as Poe copes, rallies, and crashes, again and again. By the time loved one number three begins coughing up blood, it’s almost impossible not to laugh.

Most of the story unfolds with the narrators as puppet masters, the characters acting out their stories as marionettes on strings. This works some of the time, but not every actor has the same level of physical precision. Nevermore is more interesting when the narrators are silenced and the characters are permitted to act out scenes in the present, bringing the audience in on the action.

The music, while full of stark contrasts, could be more complex. As it is, it’s enjoyable, but utterly forgettable. There’s adequate whimsy, woe, and wit in the lyrics, but the problem with paying tribute to a writer like Poe is that few can match his skill with words.

To its credit, Catalyst successfully creates an immersive experience, from the wonderfully simplistic set (a silver scaffold with various sliding doors paneled in what looks like black lace) to the lighting, costumes, and cadence of the songs. But when the initial wow factor ebbs, Nevermore continues on to increasingly diminishing returns.