TORONTO FAN EXPO 09: VIC GOES THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

This weekend I took a journey to a very strange land. A land where video game characters come to life, where Japanese loli girls rub elbows with hardcore Goth girls, where old star fleet ensigns sign autographs beside giant green superheroes ... Yes, I went to Toronto's Fan Expo.

This is a huge expo/con that covers several different areas of fan interest: Comic books, Anime, Horror, Gaming and Sci Fi. It's billed as the largest fan expo in Canada and they predicted that over the course of three days, more than a million people would attending ... quite frankly, whevever Toronto has any kind of public event these days, they expect over a million people. Mind you, it's probably true. There are just too many people in this city. I can tell you, the thing was well attended, the conference hall was vast and there were times I cold barely move. Of course, some of that was due to the fact I was often sharing the floor with some characters who may have come from a dimension held to a different standard of spacial dimensions than my own.

As I mentioned, the expo had several points of interests. I had some interest in the Gaming area as I do own an X-Box and while I am not a 12 year old boy huddling in his momma's basement and therefore can't call myself a gamer I thought: "Hey, maybe I can pick up a couple of cheap games" So over to the Gaming area I go, only to find that nobody had games for sale; what they had were tournaments and contests all designed to humiliate old farts like myself. Later, I found a vendor in the comic book area selling some used games so that made me happy. And while there weren't many games to play, there certainly were a lot of games walking around in human form.

The other area that interested me was the Anime zone. I have a certain fondness for anime and magna but mostly I was going to pick up some gifts for a friend of mine. I fond it a very interesting experience. Anime is Japanese of course and the area was just chock full of young Japanese people, mostly girls, like these two cute neko girls

Hanging around and over hearing conversations and observing behaviour, I witnessed an interesting phenomon. Most of these girls were at least first generation Canadian, judging by the lack of accent and their colloquial speech. Yet in this environment, they seemed to take on a kind of hyper-Japanese quality, taking on the personae of their anime/manga heroines. Of course, you really didn't need to be Japanese to slip into an anime role.

Of course, fantasy is what the whole experience was all about. In the comic book area, I overhead heated discussions about whether or not "Amazon could take down a 747 with just one shot or would she need two" with the same ardent sincerity I may use when discussing some political situation. At the Expo, in that situation, these fantasy concerns were allowed to be important, and come out and play.

Peronally, I think old Green Lantern may be in over his head in the above pic. Which brings us to another area of the expo, the Horror area. Whereas in the anime area, we had a surfeit of Goth loli girls:

In the horror world, the Goth girls took on a very different identity. Scary, yes, but scary in the sense of "I know this is going to be bad but damnit, it just may be worth it"

So, clearly a big focus of this event is costumes There was a maquerade and there were prizes but people really seemed to love their costumes and a lot of work clearly went into them. Of course, if you just aren't very good with needle and thread, you can do what this young lady did and take an easier route, just have your friend spray paint your costume on to you:

Not all of the attractions at the expo were in costume. The organizers brought in lots and lots of celebraties, everybody from comic book creators, to genre actors to voice talent from anime. Leonard Nimoy was the big draw. You could get his autograph .. for sixty bucks a pop. While he was there I was standing by some people who were taking photos from about 20 feet away; one of Nimoy's handlers came out to tell them they couldn't be there and I of course had to comment "Why, does Mr Nimoy own the fucking air between us and him?" That did not endear me to Mr Spock's entourage. Another actor selling his signature was Bruce Campbell, of Evil Dead and Xena and many other credits; he sold his name for 30 bucks a pop but all I heard was how cool and awesome he was, regardless.

Then there were the actors that didn't charge a damn thing for their scrawl, which may be a measure of their popularity or maybe they're just really really nice ...

Like Linda Hamilton, the first (and in my opinion) only Sarah Conners:

Then we have Mr Spock's old comrade in arms, Ensign Chekov, I mean, Walter Koenig:

I'm not an autograph hound but, besides Bruce Campbell, the one I may have gone for was Lou Ferrigno. The Incredible Hulk was a terrrible TV show. His Hercules movies sucked beyond suckage but he's Lou, and he's cool. And check out the arm, the guy still looks great

Frankly, the actors were about the only interest I had in the Sci-Fi area of the expo. I like science fiction movies, have enjoyed some series, but my man interest in science fiction has always been the liteature, which was not represented. Which brings out to the Comics section. I was once a comic book nerd, a superhero comic book nerd. The kind of guy that indeed would have been involved in the Amazon bringing down an airplane conversation. I was easing out of comics when the grapic novel was easing its way into popularity. I read The Dark Knight. I'm a big fan of the Watchmen and a few others. But I haven't really actively persued that world for a while. But I took the opportunity of the show to pick up a couple of graphic novels. One of them, I have already read.

The Pride of Baghdad. All I have to say about this is: Holy crap. Written by Brian Vaughn and beautifully illustrated Niko Henrichon, this is a book that proves graphic storytelling can go far far beyond tales of guys in spandex underwear. Based on a real life event during the invasion of Iraq it is a heartbreaking, exciting, thoughtful exploration at the real effects of war told in a very unforgettable fashion.

But going to an expo like this and concentrating on one area only, would be a waste of your time and money. For me, what made it enjoyable was the entire experience, particualarly all the avid nerds, geeks, fans and wannabes who were wandering around all weekend like they had finally come home.

What I really found interesting about the experience was not just the costumes and the almost-celebrities and the vast amounts of speciality items, but it was the passions of these young fans. While I was perusing the titles at a manga stall, a teenage girl was standing beside me in her neko ears and tail, four hand written pages of titles in her hand; her eyes flipped from the pages to the books, trying to find her manga, pretty much trembling with excitment and anticipation. It made me smile. It made wish that she never lose that passion. And it made me wonder: Was I temporarily visiting her world, or did she normally temporarily visit mine?

BUSKERFEST 09 PART ONE

As I mentioned in the last post, this weekend (well, Thurs through Sun) is the return of Buskerfest here in Toronto. Weather and other obligations meant that we aren't sure if we'll be getting down there over the weekend so Collette and I decided to go down Thursday night and see a few performances.









The thing about something like Buskerfest is that you may go down looking for a particular act but the fun is discovering something/someone new and unexpected. Sometimes that search can be fraught with peril .. or, in the case of busker festivals .. jugglers. Many, many jugglers.

Now, I have nothing against jugglers, really I don't, but even they realize that the juggling tank as an art form, may be running on empty. Balls, knives, torches, chainsaws .. none of this is very surprising any more.

So what most jugglers resort to now, in order to capture our attention, is patter. Some of it is very good patter, but it's still really 10 minutes of talking leading up to 40 seconds of shtick that we've seen before.

I mean, once you've seen a guy, hooded, juggling knives on a tall unicycle, haven't you seen em all?

What we haven't seen before was a very charming act, Senmaru & Yuki, a husband and wife team from Japan

Yes, these two had patter. But with their broken English and male-female give and take, it was pretty entertaining patter. It never lasted long and it always led to something special. What this pair did was a balancing act. They could balance anything. Balls on umbrellas, metal rings on umbrellas and boxes on umbrellas .. square wooden boxes that they spun around on the top of their Japanese umbrellas with such speed, they seemed to take the corners off the objects.

They worked very well together but also independently. Senmaru demonstrated some novel uses for such common household objects as tea pots and glasses of water.

So, something a little different, lots of skill, some humour, some gentle flair. See more of the act in the video below. But as good as Senmaur and Yuki were, they were not the highlight of our night at Buskerfest. That honour belongs to an Australian troupe called Dream State Circus, a fire show so good, it will be getting a post of its very own (gosh, they must be so excite by that) So stay tuned.

Toronto Buskerfest 09 Part One from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

SHAPE OF BLOGS TO COME

Consider this short blog a kind of Coming Attractions

This weekend Collette and I were planning to attend the blues festival in Kingston but a 10 year Saturn sedan had other plans. Like us not going.

But it's a jam packed weekend here in Toronto. Buskerfest has started this Thursday and Collette and I went tonight, hoping to dodge some dodgy (enough dodges in one sentence for you?) weather and plan to go again Sunday, if everything works out. We just got back and although it will take me a while to cut the video, we've already seen some amazing street performers. I will be doing one blog on a two person troupe called Dream State Circus. They put on a fire show that was sensual, athletic and a little breathtaking. That will be a blog worth checking out

Tomorrow (Friday) I'm off to Fancon downtown. This is a sort of all encompassing fan conference that will cover comic books, gaming, anime, scif fi and horror. I haven't been to any kind of con since I was in high school and none of them had the scope of this; I frankly have no interest strong enough in any one of these genres but all together, I'm hoping to find enough to keep my interest. I'll be hitting this one alone but I'll take Collette's Nikon; I'm thinking this event will be better suited to still rather than video and I'm hoping to get some good pics of nerd wannabes .. er .. people in costumes I mean


And as I mentioned, if the weather holds, we'll be hitting Buskerfest again on Sunday. Circus Orange will be performing and we saw them last year at
the CNE and the show was so great we want to catch them again, plus whatever other shows we can see.

So, all of this will encompass a few more blogs with pics and video and I'm hoping it will be worth taking a peak out. Stay tuned. Bring popcorn

SOME REALLY, REALLY, REALLY OLD "PULP FICTION"

The ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) here in Toronto has recently been hosting the travelling Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. Collette and I are members of the ROM but we really don't get down there as often as we should and since she will be going back to work soon, we thought we would take advantage and go down there for the afternoon.

The Dead Sea Scrolls is not one of those exhibitions that I get all twittery and drooly about, but they're something I've been reading and hearing about pretty much my whole life, so I thought I may as well cash in on the opportunity to learn more about them. We weren't allow to take our cameras into that exhibit, so no images from it, sorry.

It was pretty interesting. No matter your views on religion, you can't dismiss it from ancient or recent human history. The exhibit did a great job of presenting the era in which the scrolls were written; Israel under Roman rule, Judaism and Islam and the multi-deity cultures existing side by side .. not peacefully, of course, but all there, with yet another one god religion in the crucible.

Here in Toronto we make this big deal out of our multi-culturalism but of course, that's nothing new . The exhibit did a good job of putting you in that time and place, with Jerusalem as the major urban centre of that part of the world, the Jews living under Herod, under Roman law, of the power of religion, of the need for it, that compel people to create their own deities, their own sense of mythology, the need to identify with their own gods, to the point of risking their very survival as a culture.

I suppose that's some kind of basic human need, or at least the need of humanity, or humans when they form a community. To be unique. To be their own unit. To the point that they need their own deities, so that they can say "We were created for a purpose, for a reason, we are special and we want to acknowledge that by creating the myth of our own creation"

I love the story of how the scrolls were discovered in 1947 by Bedouin tribesman who then sold it to a local trader. When that merchant tried to sell some of the scroll to some western merchants they thought it was a fraud, so well persevered were the parchments. At the museum, there were indeed a few fragments so well preserved they could have been written a year ago, not three thousand years ago.

A lot has been discovered about the scrolls over the years, but there is still some mystery surrounding them. Not necessarily what the scrolls contain (they've been pretty thoroughly translated at this point) but where did they come from and to whom did they belong. They found the remnants of an ancient settlement nearby called Wadi Qumran. One theory goes that this was a Jewish religious sect that had become dissatisfied with the existing temple in Jerusalem. So, apparently, another case of "ok, I agree there is only one god but golly, I think my version of the one god makes way more sense than your version" Sounds like a cranky lot to me

The other theory of Qumran is that it was some kind of artisan settlement. A lot of pottery, dishes, amphorae etc were found there ... a lot, so some researches decided it must have been like some kind of communal factory. The settlement theorists counter argue that Qumran was a commune, and that these types of settlements held mass meals together which would explain the large numbers of supplies. Hell, hundreds of plates and dishes just sounds like your average Kellar dinner get together.

The scrolls themselves were pretty interesting. A lot of it is biblical writing of writing of course. I always chuckle when, in no matter what religion, we have these passages of biblical writing that never seem to make it into the authorized version. If you live your life by this book, has it ever occurred to you that someone .. someone human, just like you .. has edited it? If these writings are so important to you, don't you want them all? You know, me personally, I always want the extended director's cut. Maybe that's why so many of these religions don't seem to make much sense, every body's living their life by the Cole's Notes version (for my American friends, that's like Cliff Notes)

What I liked about the scrolls was twofold: First, just the fact that I was looking at these fragments of writings that were thousands of years old. I have to admit that kind of thing gives me a bit of a tingle. You can read about the past all you want but when you see it, when it's right there in front of your eyes, it really brings it home to you. The other thing I liked about the exhibit were the little bits of recovered artifacts that represented the day to day life of the time: Clay pots, coins, buttons, even bits of fabric and braids made out of human hair. Grand visions of gods are all well and fine but it's this kind of thing, the common detritus of everyday life, that really gives me a sense of who these people were.

After we went through the exhibit, we decided to wander around the ROM for a bit more. Our first stop was the Asian halls, which cover ancient China, Korea and Japan.

Lots of cool stuff to look at here, like these fragments (perhaps not the best term, some of these pieces are huge) from temples and palaces.

Lots of the little details of everyday life, as well, as I was mentioning earlier. Of course, I gravitated right to the armour and weapons

There is art in these ancient weapons, particularly the Japanese ones. But the quality of art overall displayed here is pretty astonishing. There was a huge tapestry, at least 10 feet long, a single work of art depicting a Japanese emperor visiting one of his provinces The detail in thing was breathtaking, from the waves in the river to each individual stick painted in a bundle carried on the back of a wood cutter.

After the Asia galleries we wandered up to Egypt (yeh, that ROM is a big building *rimshot*) another one of our favorite exhibits. Even older artifacts, with some huge murals, statues, and of course mummies

You'll some more examples of these items in the video below.

One can spend all day at the ROM. There are always special exhibits and the permanent ones are deep and varied. But it was a lovely summer day in Toronto, our feet were sore, we were thirsty ... and anyone who is muttering the word "patio" at this point knows us all too well. This time we went to the patio at Jack Astor's at Younge & Dundas, the intersection that defines the downtown area of our city. I love this patio, it's many stories high and gives a nice view of the intersection.

About the video: For the sake of convenience and in respect of ROM policy I took my little Samsung DV palmcorder. So the indoor shots have enough grain in them to bake a loaf of bread. At any rate, it may give you some taste of how we spent our afternoon.

Royal Ontario Museum Outing from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

LIST POST: ACTORS & DIRECTORS COMBO

Yes, it's another annoying list post. This one is a favorite of mine: Actors and directors who have worked together over a period of time, building a relationship, one strong enough that it comes across on the screen. This list is in way meant to be comprehensive. These are the combo's that work for me, films and artists that resonated with me over time.

If you have your own favorite combo's any that I've missed, feel free to drop me a message.

These are in no particular order, just as they occur to me mostly, but the first one is intentional, it's the pairing of actor and director that immediately springs to mind, not only for it's longevity, but for it's overall impact:

THE TWO JOHNS: No, this doesn't refer to two horny guys cruising the stroll on a Friday night. It instead refers to what I would think be one of the most successful pairings of actor and director in movies, at least American movies: John Wayne and John Ford

Between 1928 and 1962, the two Johns made twenty movies together. Story goes that Ford discovered Wayne on a movie lot when the younger man was a college student, delivering furniture. It would be a while before the two worked together, but that instance would be Stagecoach which is arguably one of the best western movies ever made (it certainly has become archetypal) and firmly established Wayne as a major movie star.

In my mind, although both men did some great work independently (it was Raoul Walsh who directed Wayne in Rio Bravo, for sure one of my favorite movies of all time, Western or not) they may have done their best work together. The poster above is of course The Searchers another archetypal western. This movie has not aged particularly well and like too many classic westerns, the depiction of aboriginal peoples is pretty shocking. But, still, it's a great movie and Ford gets from Wayne one of his most moving, complex and affecting performances. Uncle Ethan is not a nice guy, there are a lot of hard edges to him and Wayne is not afraid to show them. It also contains some of Ford's finest colour work and those beautiful, quaint little details of frontier life.

There are many more of course, The Quiet Man (perhaps Wayne's best non Western film), The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance, The 3 Godfathers and some of the best movies ever made about the US Calvary, including She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Ford Apache.

I think the two men made a perfect pairing, mostly because they were both so understated in their own rights. Wayne does not always get the acting cred he deserves but watch movies like The Sands of Iwo Jima and the tight close ups of his face (The Searchers as well) that showed how expressive he could be without saying a word. Ford was very much the same way. He was not one for a lot of camera movement, just perfectly framed shots designed to let the action within them tell the story.

In My Darling Clementine, the climax of which is the gunfight at the OK Corral, Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp, is walking down the street toward his destiny. Ford frames the shot with Fonda down at the far end of the shot, very small against the backdrop of frontier town. He walks forward, in his black suit, his pistol held casually in one hand, as if it was some prosaic tool such as a hammer. As he moves forward, his walk becomes more deliberate and he puts the gun in his shooting hand, holding it as it was intended .. and you realize the shot has been perfectly framed for this medium close up, Fonda's body centered, his face clearly defined .. before he continues to come forward, filling the shot. It's so good it gives me goosebumps.

AKIRA KUROSAWA AND TOISHURO MIFUNE:Like Ford and Wayne, this director and actor have become pretty synonymous with one another. They had a lengthy partnership, making sixteen movies over several decades. And although both made great movies without the other (Kurosawa's "Ran" and Mifune's "Samurai Trilogy" made with director Hiroshi Inagaki that may feature his strongest acting) the films they made together are considered classics, and some of my all time favorites.

The Seven Samurai and Rashomon are two movies that everyone should see. Really. Go see them. I'll wait. (It's ok, it will take you a while but I have other things to do) For me, the two "samurai with no name" movies, Yojimbo and Sanjuro are among my favorites of the collaboration.

These two movies, I think are very representative of what the two artists could bring to the table. These are samurai movies, and their best movies together took place in the samurai era, though their film Drunken Angel is a contemporary gangster movie and often credited as the first yakuza film. But the samurai mythology, like Ford and Wayne's cowboy mythos, was really where they shone. What I particularly like about Yojimbo and Sanjuro, though, is that, for all the action, they are almost comedies of manners. In the prim, ordered, anal universe of the samurai here comes Mifune's ronin; dirty, rumpled, rough, unmannered and uncultured, constantly picking at his clothing, scratching his scruffy beard, squinting and mumbling as he physically and mentally dissembles whatever world he stumbles into. These movies were of course be the inspiration for Sergio Leone's "Man with no Name" films with Clint Eastwood, and they certainly have the tang of anarchy about them. An anarchy even more pronounced in the world of bushido and samurai sensibilities. Contrast this to Mifune's character in the Samurai Trilogy and as great as these movies are, what he and Kurosawa brought to the table was something unique.

DAVID MAMET & JOE MATEGNA: This writer/director and actor certainly don't have the kind of history as the first two pairs, but I think their impact on one another is pretty significant and I just think it's a really successful collaboration.

Mantegna appeared in Mamet's first film, House of Games as well as Things Change and Homicide, and a supporting role in Red Belt. What I love about all these movies is how different they are, united mostly by Mamet's deft, lyrical dialogue and Mantegna's ability to find the humanity in any character, even underneath the famous Mamet prose.

Perhaps a common theme through these three movies is the street ... no, Joe doesn't play an incredibly verbose road paver. But in all three films he plays street level guys with some connection to crime, that suits the actor's persona very well. In House of Games he plays a con artist, in Things Change a low level gangster, in Homicide a cop. The combination of Mantegna's earthy, blue collar persona and Mamet's rarefied dialogue seems to work perfectly There's an odd rhythm to Mamet's scripts and I think Mantegna is the best actor at making it seem fluid and natural

SIDE NOTE: There is another actor who has had a successful collaboration with David Mamet. Ricky Jay is a sleight of hand magician who first appeared in House of Games (Mamet's directorial debut) and has appeared in virtually every movie since then, including the TV Series The Unit, which Mamet produced. Jay is always a supporting role but over time, has become as adept as Mantegna at letting that stylized dialogue roll off his tongue

DON SIEGAL & CLINT EASTWOOD: I know, I know, you want Sergio Leone there instead of Siegal. The two of them made the three Man with No Name Movies (Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More and The Good The Bad and The Ugly) and it was a great collaboration, no doubt, but I think Siegal and Eastwood is actually more significant.

It was Siegal who directed Dirty Harry and clearly, that is the one role Eastwood will always be associated with. Siegal got Eastwood out of the western genre with Harry and Coogan's Bluff and The Beguiled (a civil war era movie but certainly not a western) and Escape From Alcatraz. Though he did direct Two Mules For Sister Sarah, one of my fave Eastwood westerns.

Siegal's directing style could be described as prosaic and he worked well with classic American "macho" actors; Steve McQueen in Hell is for Heroes and John Wayne in The Shootist. I really think he helped Eastwood flesh out his stoic, whsipery persona and Eastwood often credits him as a major influence on his own directing career.

BUDD BOETTICHER & RANDALPH SCOTT: Yup, westerns again, and macho men, do we see a trend here? Well it doesn't get more macho than the stoic, heroic Scott and director Boetticher, a former stunt man and matador.

Beginning in the mid fifties, Budd and Scott teamed up to make six westerns that stand as some of the best "B" westerns ever made. Scott, a fairly major star who, although known primarily for westerns, had also had great success in movies off his horse. But at that point, for reasons that still aren't clear to me, he decided the only movies he had any interest in making, were westerns.

Producer Harry Brown led Scott to Boettcher, who was lost on various backlots making one unmemorable western after another. Screenwriter Burt Kennedy (who went on to become a fairly decent B movie western director in his right) came on board and the team went on to produce these austere, deftly written, well acted westerns with Scott perfectly inhabiting essentially the same character; a retired gunslinger of some sort brought back into the fray to ride the vengeance trail. What distinguishes these films is that the act of vengeance is not so clear cut. And they all feature Scott as the world weary gunman teamed with a younger, more aggressive version of himself (portrayed by actors such as Lee Marvin, Claude Atkins, Lee Van Cleef, James Coburn and many others) leading to the inevitable showdown.


I never really thought that much of Scott's acting chops but Budd was able to bring something out in him, this kind of sadness almost, particularly in the scenes where the violence became inevitable; he was older, he'd been through it, he knew what was coming but for all his experience and wisdom, he wouldn't be able to stop it.

ANYTHONY MANN & JAMES STEWART: Oh what the hell, let's finish it off with more westerns .. I'm beginning to wonder how Mamet worked his way into this list (Kurosawa makes sense, his ronin movies not only inspired many western movies, they were inspired by them in turn). Can you imagine a Mamet western? Black Hat and White Hat stand off in the dusty street, the sun starting to set behind them:

White Hat: "You're wearing your gun, Billy"
Black Hat: "Yes, it's the gun I wore, didn't you want me to wear it, you knew I would have to wear it"
White Hat: "My happiness has nothing to do with your gun, my happiness is like the bullet you left at home, it's cold and independent and it's covered in dust"
Black Hat: "I brought that bullet, it's in my gun, it's clean and hollow and it's filled with the charge of my hatred and .."
Oh for fuck sake, somebody shoot somebody!!!

Sorry ... I digress .. but you knew that I would, didn't you?


Anyway .. Anthony Mann & Jimmy Stewart. They made eight movies together but the five westerns they made together certainly defined Mann as a director and re-defined Stewart as an actor.




This is the post-war Jimmy Stewart. A leaner, meaner, driven Stewart, more likely to resort to violence than in any of his previous films. This is Stewart on the edge, his motivations more grey than black and white, and likely to erupt in a sudden paroxysm of violence that can be quite shocking.


The Man From Laramie gives us Stewart as a man falsely accused, the underdog if you will but even so, his actions seem frenetic, even shocking. Post war indeed. Even when on the vengeance trail, Stewart does so with cold, hardcore sense of purpose that makes you squirm in your seat a bit. You don't often see this side of Stewart and you never see it with the intensity that Mann is able to bring out of him. And you don't see this degree of focus and passion in Mann's earlier films, so it's a successful collaboration, each artist pulling out something bigger from the other.


This post has probably gone on long enough so I'll end it there. You may have noticed there are no females on the list. Well, I have lots of favorite female actors but I can't associate any of them with a particular director. Doesn't mean there weren't collaborations, not just by anyone I watch. If you have a match up between and actress and a director, I would love to hear it.

BACK ON THE VENGENCE TRAIL

Last year, I wrote a blog on the theme of cinematic vengeance inspired by two movies, Jodie Foster's The Brave One and Charles Bronson's Death Wish .

This past weekend Collette and I watched two movies that once again explored this theme of vengeance, from two very different perspectives. The movies were Kevin Bacon's Death Sentence from 2007 and Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino from last year. These are both Hollywood movies, and both of them are concerned with a lone, male character who goes on the vengeance trail against a group of highly armed bad guys. In both movies, the bad guys are gangs of young men, street gangs if you will.

There the similarities pretty much end. Death Sentence is a straight ahead Hollywood vengeance flick very much in the mold of Death Wish. It was, in fact, written by Brian Garfield, the author who penned the original Death Wish. Garfield began his career as an author of Western novels, not so surprising really. Vengeance is a mainstay theme of Western fiction, both printed word and movies. Death Wish the film makes reference to this Old West myth. Bronson, as New Yorker Paul Kerzey, goes to New Mexico for business, where his client quickly immerses him in a kind of cowboy code mentality, including teaching him how to shoot a six gun. This is all before the act of violence, back home, that sends Bronson down the vengeance trail.


Death Sentence does not make any such overt reference to the cowboy code, but there are several similarities to Death Wish. Bronson's character was an upper middle class architect, Kevin Bacon's character is a high level executive with a fortune 500 company. Both men become the victims of younger, lower class, low (or zero) income men. Single men. Criminals, yes, but the contrast seems to be these young single men, no family, no jobs, no significant possessions, literally attacking these older, more well established men. In both movies, the main characters themselves are not the the prime victims of the initial attacks. It's their families that are attacked, their children. In Death Wish, Bronson's wife and daughter are attacked. In Death Sentence, it's Bacon's son. Later, his wife and other son become victims.

Death Wish throws Bronson into the role of a vigilante, seeking out criminals in the streets of NYC and dispatching them. In Death Sentence, Kevin Bacon focuses his vengeance on the members of the gang who killed his son. This is indeed Old West stuff. Instead of bringing strangers to justice, individually targeting the varmints who gunned down your kin. I think this concept is a much more satisfying fantasy for a lot of people. I've had many conversations with men when, after reading some horrific news report about a child molested or murdered by strangers, the dad I'm talking to declares something like: "If that was my child, I'd hunt that bastard down and castrate him/kill him/rip out his eyes and piss on his brains .." whatever the invective of the day may be. Death Sentence taps into this personal aspect of the vengeance myth .. I was going to say "macho" instead of personal but I've heard moms utter the same kind of sentiments.


To me, the main differences between Death Wish and Death Sentence, is indeed this "personalized" approach to the vengeance. Charles Bronson is a vigilante that becomes the media darling of his city. Kevin Bacon is a wounded dad hunting down the exact, individual criminals who killed his family. Death Wish was released in 1974, Death Sentence in 2007. Is this some kind of sign of the times? Have we soured on the concept of someone taking society's justice into their own hands, or is this simply an offshoot of the "nesting" craze; I care more about my family than I do the bigger, more complex, scarier world.

In The Brave One, although Jodie Foster eventually has her showdown with the baddies who wronged her, she too takes the vigilante turn off the vengeance trail. But as I said, it was a combo kind of thing and once she dispatched the criminals, her hunting ended. Just as with Kevin Bacon, who hangs up his shotgun and automag when he takes out the last of the gang ... If there is any integrity to the story, it should end there. Bronson, as a impersonal vigilante, lived to fight on in several remakes, none of which really bare any kind of review here.

That brings us to Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, a wholly different kind of revenge movie. On the surface, this movie has some things in common with all three of the other vengeance movies; innocent people terrorized by gangs of unemployed young men, a failed "justice" system (not sure where you go to find a justice system, in North America, we live under a legal system) and a lone gunman riding in to the rescue .. but it's all really just surface. (OK, they're movies, so they are only about surface but permit me this one conceit .. ok, you have to permit me lots of conceits, I'm a Leo after all).



In Gran Torino, Clint plays a Korean war vet, disenfranchised from his family, recently, watching his old white only ghetto transformed into an Asian ghetto. His neighbours are being terrorized by an Asian street gang. The bare bones of the plot, the expectation of the story, is that as a man of action, Clints saddles up, brushes off his guns and goes after the gang. Well, to a certain extent he does. He uses his guns and his pure onery power of character to intimidate the gang .. which leads them to escalate their violence against the neighbours. Same thing occurs in Death Sentence; as Bacon begins hunting the gang down, they turn their vengeance on his family.

In Gran Torino, as part of the gang's retribution, they rape the young girl with whom Clint has started a friendship. This is a common theme in these vengeance movies. In Death Wish, Bronson's wife and daughter are "violated" by the bad guys and it's this act that sets him on the vengeance trail; avenging the honour of the women folk. Again, Death Sentence takes a slightly more politically correct stance, it's the murder of Kevin Bacon's son that starts the bloodshed, his wife is killed later. This is sort of like the Disney/Pixar of vengeance movies, where it's all about the father and son.

Gran Torino is not really a vengeance movie. Sure, it follows the bare outlines of the genre but it is more a movie of redemption; of Clint Eastwood's character finding redemption for his past coldness to his own family and sins he committed in war, but protecting this Asian family. But he does not protect them as he would have as the Outlaw Josey Wales or the Man With No Name. He protects them by not only removing the threat (the gang members) but by doing so in a manner that leaves them free of any guilt or remorse. It's not about vengeance, or the Old West definition of justice. It's about finishing things. As Walt says in the movie "I finish things. That's what I do"

The ending of the original Death Wish and even The Brave One leaves one with a sense that, even though all the bad guys have been dispatched, things may not be finished. There are loose ends. The very act of vengeance leaves a lot of mess in its wake. If that sense is supposed to be there at the end of Death Sentence, it is far more subtle. This movie struck me as a far more straight ahead, eye for an eye, kick the bastards where they live kind of movie.

So are we becoming more mellow as movie goers? Is Hollywood sensing a tempering of societal bloodlust? Clint Eastwood's movie is a kind of anti vengeance, vengeance movie, or at least "vigilante bad, official vengeance good" Made only two years ago, Death Sentence is not anywhere near so gentle. There is irony afoot here. Clint Eastwood, who has kind of made a career riding the vengeance trail, gives us an almost gentle vengeance movie whereas Kevin Bacon, the good looking hunk with a heart, goes balls to the walls, all guns blazing.

So where will the vengeance trail next take us? I suspect that there will always be an audience for the hapless victim, who, through some judicious editing and a serious suspension of disbelief, turns into Rambo and provides all the bad guys with some biological air conditioning? Or will it be a gentler, kinder trail, where the hero plies the villain with pomegranate juice and arugula, and convince him, that all he really needs is a nice deep tissue massage ...

Saddle up.

SLOUVAKI SAVES THE WORLD

It's that time of year again, for one of Toronto's most popular neighbourhood street fests, the Taste of the Danforth. Danforth Avenue, or simply The Danforth, is Toronto's Greek neighbourhood and they've been putting this fest on for over ten years now. To call it popular is an understatement. Over the course of a weekend, more than a million people will be crawling up and down the street, consuming 3 dollar slouvaki and spinach pie and ouzo.

The festival runs Friday night and Saturday and Sunday, normally we go on one of the two days but the weather forecast was crappy .. wow, there's a shock, a summer Toronto weekend that called for rain. I'm getting pretty fucking tired of this, I have to tell you. Last year we had a great time but I didn't need a repeat of our soggy time last year. So this time we went on Friday night, when the predicted weather seemed perfect.

We started off the evening watching a little rock 'n blues with John Dickey and the Swamp Dawgs, a local act featuring John, who is a kind of Toronto legend. Well, if he isn't, he should be.

After listening to John and the boys for a bit, it was time to wander down the street. You could tell that the weather was great. I swear that all one million of the expected guests were there that Friday ... in one intersection. The crowds got kind of out of control. I'm a tad claustrophobic and there were couple of minutes where I have no memory, just this impression of heat and closeness and restriction .. but the minutes passed and we finally made our way through the log jam of people .. and found food.

Slouvaki on a pita may be the best treatment for claustrophobia. Now that I think of it, slouvaki may be the cure to many of the world's ills. How can you think of pillaging and subjugating and giving out short term high interest loans when you have a face full of marinated grilled chicken, pita bread and tzatziki sauce. Seriously. You can't really think of devoiding someone of their basic human rights while chowing down on slouvaki.

After we had first of several gorgings of the evening, we found another stage where a Cuban band was enticing even the typically conservative Toronto crowd into some spontaneous dancing.

I know, I know .. it's a Greek fest and so far we've had swamp blues and meringue ... well, the Danforth is actually a pretty a multi cultural street in the most multi cultural city in the world so, although last year, we showed up at the stages in time for all the Greek events, pretty much the whole world was represented. One of the biggest line ups for food was for Chinese food .. in the middle of the big fat Greek festival.

I really don't know what it is about street fests. I just love them. Part of it is about wandering along in the middle of the road, ignoring the street lights, gobbling your food without forks or knives .. yeh, I'm a rebel. If somebody had given me scissors, I would have run with them, damnit.

As we wandered along, we came across this couple doing the human statue thing. I guess they were supposed to represent Classical Greek art. Take a good long look at this pair, kids. This is what happens to you when you don't have a post secondary education.

After we stuffed ourselves (spinach pie, slouvaki on a pita and enormous pieces of fruit for ten bucks) we naturally began to seek a place to sit down and imbibe. For this weekend the local bars were able to extend their patios on to the street but pretty much all of them were jammed. No problem, we thought, there are beer tents right here in the middle of the road .. um, no. First tent we went to was all wine and cocktails .. seven bucks for a tiny glass. Nope. The we saw the Motts Clamato tent .. well, hell, I could have a Caesar. I like Caesars. At four bucks, all in all, not a bad deal. You'd think it would be a simple thing ... but of course not. I wanted your classic Caesar ... vodka, clamato juice, Wort shire, hot sauce .. they had classic Caesars, but they so badly wanted me to sell me other kinds .. kinds with gin, with cucumber, with rye whiskey .. I just stared the cute young bartender dead in her barely-out-of-highschool face and said "I've been drinking these since before you were born. I'll take two" But I'll give her credit. It was one of the best Caesars I've ever had.

So, we had a great night. As I write this, Saturday actually turned out to be a pretty great day, but there was no way we could handle the crowds. Though it was, indeed, tempting to go down, score more slouvaki and mail it off to the UN. Ah well, perhaps next year.

Here's the video, short and sweet, just a little taste of the evening.

Taste of the Danforth 09 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.