TONY CURTIS R.I.P.

Yesterday, at the age of 85, Tony Curtis died
When I go through my list of favourite actors, I'm not sure where Tony would place or even if he would come to mind. That's a misnomer, really. Because many of his movies would make, and have made, several of my lists. He made my list of favourite movie sword fights for his emotion charged duel with Kirk Douglas in The Vikings .
He also deserves honorable mention for his fencing work in what was once one of my favourite comedies, The Great Race. The only reason that movie is no longer one of my favourites is, quite frankly, because they stopped showing it on TV and I haven't thought about it in years
So from this we can establish a couple of things about Mr Curtis, that he was an incredibly athletic actor and he had a way with comedy. More proof of his physical talent comes in movies like Trapeze, an incredibly corny circus melodrama that is memorable only for director Carol Reed's typical wonky camera angles and the dazzling trapeze scenes Curtis performed with Burt Lancaster
More proof of Tony's comedic excellence can be found in a movie that does make a lot of my lists. Some Like It Hot is often remembered for Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon, but Curtis's triple role .. as the jazz player on the lam, that man's drag identity and the Cary Grant impersonation he does as Monroe's wooer .. always stand out in my mind. I'm pretty sure that as the fake millionaire pursuing Marilyn, Curtis used the phrase "Judy, Judy, Judy" which became a staple of Cary Grant impressions for many years.
I suppose these are the images of Curtis that linger in most people's mind, the gorgeous physically gifted comedian .. and let's face fact, the man was gorgeous. So gorgeous that he was cast in Spartacus as Lawrence Olivier's boy toy.
But the man had a long, long career and in that time played a wide variety of roles. He took noteable dramatic turns in movies like The Defiant Ones with Sidney Portier, a movie that was famous in its day for addressing issues of race but come across now as a bit of a pot boiler
But that movie proved Tony's bravery and his dedication to the craft of acting. He was a movie star, he was a pretty boy, he was packaged as a romantic leading man, but he wasn't scared of pursuing controversial roles, like The Defiant Ones, or roles that did not cast him in the most flattering of light. One such example is The Sweet Smell of Success (again with Burt Lancaster) that cast Curtis as a totally immoral, devious Broadway public relations man. He did not hide from this character's hard edges, he come across as slimy and heartless under that polished, gleaming pretty exterior

More famously, Curtis put his reputation as a suave, funny leading man on the line with the darkest performance of his career, as the titular Boston Strangler. Curtis did not hold back in this role. He played the man as a monster, a predator, and his role is surprisingly restrained while at the same time showing us some of the terrible darkness that must live inside someone who could perform such deeds
It seems that to survive for decades in Hollywood, you have to be able to reinvent yourself. Curtis was certainly capable of doing that. Comedian, leading man, dramatic actor, ultimate villain. In later life, he reinvented himself as Hollywood icon and artist and of course, father of Jamie Lee Curtis .. that in itself a significant achievement don't you think
Tony popped up in movies and TV over the last couple of decades, usually playing soap operaish bad guys or some caricature of himself. Perhaps that is why I don't often think of him, now, as being one of my favourites. And yet look at that movie list. Certainly The Vikings is one of my all time favorite movies and he was not just a tourist in that movie, he was an integral part of what makes it work for me. Some Like it Hot and Sweet Smell of Success often come to mind but of course for very different reasons. Both are overall strong movies and, in a sense, ensemble pieces. He was a movie star who had no problem being a co-star.
Now that Tony is gone, let's not forget about him. A lot of his movies were very much of their time and perhaps don't stand up, but others are as good today as the day they were released. He was nominated for an Oscar for The Boston Strangler but he did not win. Perhaps that is why he rarely is mentioned as a great dramatic actor. Or perhaps it's because he was a such a fine comedic actor, albeit an understated one, happy to immerse himself into a role, or a variety of roles in one movie, as in Some Like It Hot. Or, even better example, The Great Impost0r, where he played a man who pretended to be everyone, in his life
When I think of Tony Curtis I think of the movie star, of the icon, as the legend. I don't immediately think of the actor, not until I think of the roles and the movies themselves. So Rest In Piece, great impostor, what better appellation could one give to a great actor.

IS IT REALLY REAL OR JUST REAL ENOUGH

All words have meaning. Honestly, they do, I found this weird book called a dictionary, and wow, it had all these definitions ... Who knew?

But words are not just defined by a dictionary. Words are defined by users, over time, across generations. They are changed (for example the word "gay" has many more different connotations now than in the past) and they are sometimes discarded (when was the last time you heard someone use the word "redoubtable")

The word in question today is "reality" Reality as used by TV. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are venturing into the ethical quagmire of reality TV. Be afraid be very afraid.

I have this thing about TV. My thing is, nothing is ever real, if real is spontaneous, unaffected, completely subjective to whomever is experiencing it. That's difficult to do with TV. There's this thing called a camera, and a camera op, and a sound op, and a production assistant, and a producer who's only concern is "how does this look" and "will this get us ratings" Even with the best of intentions I don't know how real people can be in that kind of environment.

Currently, on TV, you can break "reality" shows into a few different categories. First you have the contest type shows, like Survivor or Big Brother or Amazing Race

These are game shows, really, with people competing to win prizes. All game shows have been "reality" shows in that they are unscripted and unrehearsed. We know these more recent style of game shows are a tad different. I don't believe for a second that they are totally spontaneous. The producers of Survivor have admitted that certain scenes have been reinacted (like a long lens overhead shot of competitors swimming) but that these scenes had nothing to do with the outcome of the contest.
Frankly none of that really concerns me. It's a game show, it's not a documentary, I may watch the show but I don't care who wins. All game shows have always had a certain amount of artifice associated with them, I've learned to accept that. Yes, my sense of resignation is powerful, isn't it

The second category of reality TV is the "real world" concept, probably created (at least in North America) by MTV. Be they a bunch of pretty, vapid (and pretty vapid) kids like in Jersey Shore ..

.. or celebrities trying to kick start a flagging career like that of Kiss frontman Gene Simmons ..
.. the actually "reality" in these shows is, at best, specious. The problem is this: From pretty much the beginning of TV, producers have always believed that conflict is what drives entertainment. Certainly true in fictional shows but it's always held true for reality. We all know that what gets a TV news produder's knickers wet is a good war, a great hurricane, or (let's be honest here) a missing child. It's conflict. Then you have these real world shows where, quite frankly, be it celeb or amateur most of the people just aren't that interesting.
On your real world shows like Jersey Show or .. strangely enough ... The Real World or the various Real Housewives, conflicts comes from stocking the show with a bunch of rude, stupid, vapid, shallow people who are willing to do anything to be on TV. And hopefully that "anything" will include getting drunk, showing some skin and verbally attacking each other in the most vile of all possible ways.

On the low rent celeb shows, ramping up the conflict may involve creating situations that the stars can react to. Gene Simmon's show is basically a sitcom. There are many obvious set ups, involving what are clearly actors, that put Gene is a zany situation where hilarity can ensue. Yup, Gene Simmons has become the Lucy of his generation.

The third category of reality shows are what we can term "occupational" shows, that chronicle the lives of people united by some common industry. The grand daddy of these is probably Deadliest Catch, produced by Thom Beers

Beers is certainly the godfather of this category. He has produced not only Deadliest Catch but Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men, Monster House and many others. These particular shows really are documentaries. Yes, they of course fall prey to the subjectivity of the lens but one feels that amount of scripting and "set ups" are held to a minimum. Take Deadliest Catch for example; the point of this show is to profile the men who fish for Alaskan crab, presented as the deadliest of all jobs. The show follows the same group of fishermen who have, essentially, become the cast. Over the years, ships have gone down, men have died, but never those of the cast. Until this past year.

This year Captain Phil, one of the regular cast members died. But he did not die at sea or go down with the ship and let's be honest, like TV news, that would have been a sure ratings getter. So this is close to reality. Sometimes nothing happens Sometimes terrible things happen, but no one seems to be in control of it

From the high of Thom Beers "occupational" reality we go to the low, like L.A. Ink which documents the tattoo shop of Kat Von D
Here is a perfect example of TV needing to create conflict. This show, a spin off of Miami Ink, started off as a chronicle of the shop and featuring the stories behind its customers and the tattoos that they bought. Apparantly not enough conflict. The focus began to shift from the customers to the shop itself, to Kat and her staff. A couple of "new employees" came in and instantly clashed, creating conflict. Turns out that at least one of these employees has a history of being on "reality TV" shows so it really does make me wonder how they ended up working in this tattoo shop

I also call into question the editing on this show. There are many, many scenes, where we have dialogue between two characters so you have the standard cutting back and forth between close ups. What bothers me is that the audio does not follow the video. In other words, as Kat is speaking we are on a close up of shop manager Aubrey. When Aubrey responds we are on a close up of Kat's face or an extreme close up of her hands or something. This makes my Spidey sense tingle. Yes, it is standard practise to overlap audio and video exhanges; as Kat talks you will see a shot of Aubrey's eyes as a reaction ... but not in every single scene or during every single exchange. The whole thing looks very heavily edited to me, I begin to wonder where these cutaway shots have come from, a few times the lighting of one shot doesn't match up with that of another ... as if that cutaway comes from an entirely different scene altogether. I wonder why. What is being left out, or what is being added.

Um, did I ever mention I edit videos for a living?

Now we get to the point of this post .. yes, there is a point. I guess I slept well last night. Anyway ...

There is a new show running on History Channel and it sort of falls into the occupational mode yet it strays from that and the perspective is definitely skewed and it may be deliberate and it may be a bit of pirandello or it may be something entirely different ...

Chasing Mummies is a show that follows the exploits of Dr Zahi Hawass, maybe the most famous archaeologist of our time and head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. This guy is real. And powerful. And real powerful. If you've watched any shows on mummies on the History Channel over the last several years, you've seen this guy

Now, a History Channel show on this guy is nothing new, you can tell fairly quickly that although he is certainly the read deal, Dr Hawass doesn't mind the camera. He seems to love it. But he is more than just an archaeologist, he is the spokesman for the antiquities of his nation and therefore, being on camera is part of his job.

But Chasting Mummies is giving us something different. It's not the typical documentary or occupational TV series where cameras and crew are largely hidden. Here, the producer and his crew are front and center. The show is as much about making the show as it is about Hawass. This has a lot to do with our hero's temperment; he is a tyrant, with temper to match. He is constantly at loggerheads with the film crew, treating them like worrisome gnats chewing away on ancient Egyptian muslin.

Oooh can we fell the conflict building?

Well apparantly, a man for whom we are supposed to have respect berating and insulting people hired to help promote him is not conflict enough. The show also unleashes Hawass on a group of archaeological fellows from universities in North America

What I find interesting about this, is that there was an open casting call for students who wanted to fill these roles. Yes, I call them roles. It isn't Hawass selecting these students to learn from him, it was the producers of the TV show. Hold on, I feel reality bending just a little bit.

Then we have the show itself. It has been edited and packaged as combination action series/real world reality show. Each episode starts in media res, which means putting you in the middle of the action, like a camera man lost in a pyramid at night, then using flashbacks to reveal how he got there

What's that Lassie? There's a cameraman stuck in the pyramid? Well, let's call Dr Hawass!

Yes folks, let's watch Dr Hawass rescue a poor female student from the pyramid, guide a group on foot through the dessert after their vehicles break down, admonish and berate a young woman because she peed inside of pyramid .. This last one is not a metaphor. In one of the episodes, one of the female students wets herself deep inside a pyramid. Of course, Dr Hawass totally humiliates and berates her and the camera lingers on her face to capture her shame and in one incredible tabloid-like moment, we actually see a close up of the girl's soiled crotch ...

Yeh, this is archaeology and science at its finest.

So let's say, for sake of argument, that the "cast" is genuine and all the "situations" are unscripted and spontaneous. There is still the added element of the involvement of the production crew and they are very involved, the producer becomes one of the principle characters in the story.

Is this pirandello? To wit: We know this is TV, we know that TV "real" may not be reality, so why not acknowledge that bring us all in on the joke while at the same time documenting what is real ..

Or is it all one big ruse. Does it matter? Well History Channel is not normally known for this kind of reality show. Dr Hawass has been on the channel many times and although it is difficult to ignore his abrasive personality, here it is front and center. Hell's Kitchen is a contest-style reality series that is more about Chef Gordon Ramsey abusing the contestants than about the contest itself

I've already seen that Dr Hawass may be an older, gender altered Laura Croft, rescuing his charges from certain doom .. and perhaps in the morning he will whip them all up a nice eggs benedict.

FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, BITE LIKE A BORDER COLLIE

Bo Jackson - football and baseball

Dave Winfield - baseball and basketball

Dieon Sanders - baseball and football

Jim Brown - football and lacrosse (no, really, lacrosse, not even I could make this up)

They are rare, these multi sport athletes, and they gain fame through their ability to excel at more than one athletic endeavour. Well, we need to add a new name to the roster of the immortals ...

On our recent trip up north, Terra demonstrated that she is no one hit wonder. She is not an athlete defined by any single disipline. She is at home in the water ..
.. on land ..

.. or even in the air ..

... Terra has proven that she is up to just about any athletic endeavour. While Terra has already established herself as a martial artist she has expanded her athletic repertoire to include various ball sports.
But this has not been an easy road. Natural talent is not enough to propel an athlete from the standard to the extraordinary. Every great athlete needs an inspiration, a mentor, a coach. And Terra has Miss Hayley ..
Coach Hayley is always there with an encouraging bark, a sympathetic tail wag, or, her most favourite motivational technique, a swift bite to the bum ..
And in this day and age, talent like this always means dollars and cents. For athlete and coach both. Luckily, they have an agent to whom they look for advise and guidance, in this case Collette who has all the financial answers ... and the ball in her hand
Now that a contract is the works, the two girls have some negotiating to do: Terra - "Let's demand free kibble forever!" Hayley - "Dumb jock, we already get kibble what we hold for is pizza! Pizza I tell you!"

But until the scouts and the managers and the owners are ready to get serious and puppy up (instead of pony up) Coach Hayley will keep her protoge in tune with that old mantra, practise practise practise .... or I'll bite your furry butt
And now, sports fans, let's go to the video ...

Multisport Athlete? from Collette Scale on Vimeo.

WHAT THEY LEFT BEHIND

We all live our lives. Many of us try to make our mark as we live that life, through the way that we live it, in the way that we affect others, by our interactions with those around us. For some people, it's our work that speaks for us. And for others it's a legacy. Not so much what we did, but what we left behind.
This past weekend Collette and I went to Pointe Au Baril, to her home and her family's business, Springhaven Lodge to carry out a wish of her parents, Marg and Nick, to have their ashes blended with the waters of Nares Inlet.

Part of Nick and Marg's legacy is the wood and mortar of the lodge itself but really in the long run, that is the least of it. It is more the imprint made on a country, the impression made upon those who have visited there, the memories carried in the mind and the heart for years and for generations.

On a sunny September day, with the wind mild and water unusually calm, the Scale families gathered and took their boats and turned out of Nares Inlet, past the great sleeping rocks and the green trees full of verdant energy and the restless water that never sleeps, that eddies and streams and forms and makes and creates, much like a man from the city whose restlessness helped to define this place

It was a chance to soak in the beauty of this area, where this family was raised, played, made their livings, raised their families. The place that Nick brought them to, all those years ago, and spent a lifetime making their home

It was a time for a few stories, for mostly quietly remembrance, for listening to the sound of the water tickling the boats, the wind in the barbed trees, for inner looks and the feeling of the sun sighing across your skin

Everyone mourns in their way. Everyone remembers in their own way. Even when together, at this time, united by circumstance, connected by blood, joined by memory people were in their own space, some quiet, some vocal, some still and inward viewing, some demonstrative. Surrounded by the wind and the sun and the stone with the sound of the water running through it all, like the susurrus of blood under your skin.

Collette's way to remember is to take pictures and to collect stories about her dad, a project that we hope to have posted in some form on the net soon. My way is take video. I wasn't there for much of Nick and Marg's life. But perhaps by recording this present, I will keep the past living on, sometime into the future.

A Remembrance Weekend from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

CNE 2010 PART 2: THE AIR SHOW

We love air shows. But we all acknowledge that there is a certain amount of danger inherent in air show performances, with pilots pushing their super charged machines to the edge for our enjoyment

However at this year's air show at the CNE, the biggest danger was whether or not the planes could fly at all. Apparently some grumpy fellow called Earl was throwing a meteorological hissy feet on the east coast and we were feeling the effects here. The show usually runs Saturday, Sunday and Monday; they had to cancel the Saturday show for high winds

That left us with the decision whether to to go Sunday or Monday. The voodoo shamen witchdoctors who create weather reports were telling us that Monday would be the better of the two days. Sunday turned out to be pretty reasonable, the winds had died down and it was mostly sunny

But Monday was supposed to be even better, sunny and mid 20's Celsius. Well apparently the weather juju men hadn't been sacrificing to the right gods. Monday started out cool and very rainy. I really thought they were going to cancel the show entirely. Luckily, most of these pilots are a hearty lot and thankfully, seeing as this was the last show of the year, it was on

When I say that most of the planes came out to play, we did not see any of the big American fighter jets, like the F-16 Viper and F-22 Raptor, although they were scheduled to do so. But I guess our Canadian pilots are more macho or something, because a pair of CF-18 Hornets showed up ..

.. and a CT-114 Tudor along with a WWII Corsair as part of the Heritage fly by ..

... and of course, the Snow Birds flew, I guess this proves that Canadians really do handle inclement weather better .. or something

An although I do enjoy watching, and hearing, the jets fly, I love watching some vintage warbirds as well. We got the aforementioned Corsair ..

This WWII fighter plane was modelled after the Corsair flown in the Pacific theatre by Lt Hampton Gray, who was awarded the last Victoria Cross of the war for sacrificing his airplane and himself to destroy a Japanese battleship. The show also included WWII planes like this B-25 bomber ...

.. and of course the Harvards showed up, the planes used to train Canadian pilots in WW II. I love these planes, big clumsy things never designed as fighters but the pilots at the show display remarkable skill and dexterity as they pull them through several impressive tricks. And I love that full throated whine of their big radial engines which you will hear in the video.

My favorite part of the air show, however, has always been the aerobatic performers. This year, due to the lack of scheduled performers, we had two flyers who gave us extra long shows.

Rob Holland flies a single wing MX2 custom air show plane, and as you'll see in the video, puts on an energetic, skillful, rather breath taking show

Equally breath taking was Mike Wiskus in his souped up little biplane

The vintage look of this guy's plane certainly suits him, he is very much in the tradition of an old fashioned barn stormer. Boating is one of his hobbies and he seems to like combining that with his flying, the guy just loved to get that biplane down on the deck and buzz the police boats that patrol show center

Of course, the air show would not be the air show without the Snow Birds

We've seen the Snow Birds dozens of times probably but I never tire of them. Their little Tudor jets don't give them the awe and thunder of some other military flying teams but that's a kind of benefit; it makes them concentrate on precision team flying which is always amazing to see

The ability of these pilots to keep these tight formations, wing tip to wing tip, or to fly within yards of each other at hundreds of miles per hour never fails to impress

So weather notwithstanding, we had another totally enjoyable air show. Low skies perhaps, some rain, but the crowds were there, the planes were there, and Lake Ontario seemed to vibrate with the sound of motors and wings.

Enjoy the video

CNE Air Show 2010 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.