THE BOOK OF MORMON THEATRE REVIEW: A FUNNY THING HAPPENS ON THE WAY TO THE PROMISED LAND

Did you hear the one about an 18th century American farmer who claimed to have dug up a scripture not only telling of Hebrew tribes who lived in ancient North America but who were also visited by Jesus Christ?

How about the one about a village in Uganda, plagued by poverty and AIDs who had to pay tribute to a mad warlord in order to prevent him from mutilating all their females?

Well how about we roll both stories together and make a musical! Yeh that thud you heard was Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland passing out. Of course Mickey and Judy are both gone so we're stuck with Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of South Park) and their musical The Book of Mormon.

The play tells the story of a group of Mormon missionaries who travel to Africa to convert the heathen to their own brand of religion. The Uganda they find is full of violence and poverty and sexual abuse. The locals see no point in converting to the white religion as they see nothing in it for themselves. As one character constantly points out, visions of heaven mean little when you have maggots in your scrotum. As one of the Mormons is quick to learn "The Lion King did not present an accurate picture of Africa at all!"

I would call this play irreverent but that would be like calling Satan a guy with a grumpy attitude. This is satire, sometimes teeth bared in your face, sometimes slyly hidden inside of the cheerily scored, cheekily versed songs. Don't get me wrong, there isn't a ton of subtly here; we have a warlord called Buttfuckin Naked and an African expression that the Mormons thinks is like Katuna Matana but really means Fuck You God.

You could concentrate on the material that could offend and you would be well satisfied. These guys are equal opportunity offenders: Religion, Disney, TV, missionaries, sex, women, men, war, health care ... there is something for everyone.

Not surprisingly, The Book of Mormon devotes a lot of its time to harpooning, skinning, eviscerating and devouring the Church of Latter Day Saints. The Church provides the authors with a lot of material; let's be honest here, the Mormon Church, base on their own writings, is a pretty goofy religion. Each scene of the play is prefaced by the story of Mormon founder Joseph Smith and the creation of his church and it's pretty hilarious stuff. Much of the meat of the play's plot revolves around this goofiness and the Elders dispatched around the world to "sell" these stories to people

This is a Mirvish production so the performances throughout are quite solid but the standouts come from Mark Evans and Christopher John O'Neil as the two novice Elders and Samantha Marie Ware as a local village girl, Nabulungi who's name is constantly mispronounced by the Mormons; Nintendo, Neosporin, Neutrogena amont others. Miss Ware has the production's best voice, whether she milking every possible litre of innuendo from the song "Baptize Me" or soaring to the rafters in her homage to the promised land of the Mormons, "Sal Tlay Ka Siti"

Mark Evans portrays Elder Price, the golden boy of the Mormon missionary training centre, to whom everything comes easily and who is looked upon to do great things in Africa. Of course, this being a comedy, things don't quite work out that way. As his world and the visions of himself fall apart, the Elder is visited of a vision of Mormon Hell which is populated by Hitler, Jeffery Dalmer, Ghengis Kahn, Johnny Cochrane (I let OJ get off) and dancing cups of Starbucks coffee.

The true scene stealer of the production, however, is Christopher John O'Neill as Elder Cunningham. A congenital liar who has never actually read the Book of Mormon, he is initially perceived as Elder Price's sidekick. As Cunningham tells Price "You're Frodo and I'm Sam!" But as the mission begins to fall apart, it is Cunningham with his vivid imagination who saves the day; he reinterprets the Book of Mormon for the villagers, populating the already goofy parables with hobbits and Yoda and characters from Star Trek. O'Neill is a comedic tour de force, filling the stage with energy and momentum, able to show off his physical skills even to us up in the cheap seats

There is actually a form of message in all this madness and it has to do with that faith is faith, belief is belief, and perhaps the intent is more important than the method. But that never gets in the way of the true intent of this musical: To make you pee your pants with laughter. Book of Mormon is flat out funny, my jaws literally were aching when I left the Princess of Wales theatre.

It's pretty fair to say that this is one of the funniest productions to visit Toronto in a long time; they are predicting a sell out and I can't disagree with that. This is a touring production so it's run will be limited.
Tickets will likely be difficult to find but perhaps you could pray ... like, to Yoda.

TO SUMMIT IT UP: THE COPS MAY NOT HAVE GOTTEN IT

Just a warning: This post has definite political overtones, something I try to avoid but as I've said before, it's sometimes difficult to divorce politics from your daily life

What this post does contain is a level of irony so deep and unintended it made me want to push Reset on my brain, because I thought I had made a mistake while importing the data

In 2010 Toronto paid host to the G20 Summit. It was several days of riots, burning police cars, civil disobedience both illicit and legitimate and marked, overall, by the impression that our policing authorities had kind of lost their grip on the situation

Part of downtown was fenced, special jails were set up on the street and while the initial rioters were merely observed by the police and allowed to run away (supposedly to be caught another day) other people, like U of T professors were immediately arrested.

I wrote a couple of posts about it at the time; you can find them here and here and here and finally here

In the time since then there have been several investigations. Cops were charged with things ranging from mismanagement in deploying of officers, invalid arrests, and one cop was charged with assault after baton whipping a person already in custody. Many cops, before the riots even took place, "blacked out" their badges by putting tape over their badge numbers. Not only is this an infraction it spoke to a rather chilling frame of mind of these officers; it was as if they anticipated violating rules and laws and were quite prepared to do so.

Many higher authorities from the provincial ombudsman to the regional police watchdogs who cited 100's of violations. It seems very clear that this was a very dark time for the Toronto police dept. Even Chief Blair admitted to being "overwhelmed."

So it came as a jaw dropping surprise to me that the special police task force that had been created for the summit is so proud of their performance that have awarded themselves with positive citations and commendations. Their reasoning: Hundreds or arrests were made, the task force was thrown together almost on a whim and boy did they bust a lot of people ...

Seems to be irrelevant that most of these "busts" have been deemed, at least, capricious and many instances, downright illegal. A bust is a bust I guess. After all, ain't a cop's job to convict, it's to make arrests. To paraphrase a popular saying: Arrest em all and let smarter people sort em out later.

It's also rather telling that such an important task force was "thrown together" Not only was the police dept overwhelmed, they seemed to be taken by surprise. Funny, I knew about the summit months before hand and have watched for years the violent riots that can take place at these things.

It's also very telling that a few weeks ago police chief Blair sent an inhouse video critisizing his own rank and file for their cavalier attitude, their flaunting of official police policies and a general disregard for their own public perceptions. That entreaty seemed to have fallen on deaf ears as did all those G20 investigations and charges.

A bust is a bust.

Perhaps it's time to put a fence around police headquarters

OBLIVION THE MOVIE: ALL THINGS SCI FI TO ALL PEOPLE

If you enjoy science fiction movies you will probably enjoy the Tom Cruise movie Oblivion. And I do mean sci fi movies, plural, because this one movie is actually a lot of sci fi movies ... all rolled into one. It tries to be all things sci fi movies to all people and we all know that when you try to please everyone, you mostly succeed at not pissing off anyone.

If you like post apocalypse movies (and I do, I always think that start of a good story is the destruction of humanity) Oblivion has you covered. The film starts several years after humanity has been invaded by aliens we call the Scavs, our war with them destroys most of the planet, the Scavs blow up the moon creating huge earthquakes and tsunamis that tear the earth apart and thanks to the bombs we unleash, irradiate the rest of the planet. As Cruise's character states, we win the war but lose the earth.

Mankind is preparing to leave Earth to colonize Titan but in order to do so, we have to drain the oceans to provide fuel for a huge space station/space ship called the Tet, that hangs up in the sky. The Scavs, though defeated, are still around and seemed interested in destroying the hydro processors; the Tet launches drones to defend the processors but these lethal robots need maintenance. This is where Cruise comes in. He plays Jack, a technician whose duty is to service the drones and protect them from the Scavs

Jack is not utterly alone on Earth, he has been partnered with Victoria, Andrea Riseborough, who monitors Jack's movements and acts as a liaison with Mission Control in the Tet. The pair of them live in a glass stilt house high above the earth and high above the clouds

The movie starts out with a very deliberate pace; Jack and Vic's life seem rather placid for the fact they live on a planet that is badly wounded. These are among my favorite scenes in the movie; you know that something isn't right here, that the picture is a little too perfect. And sure enough, the cracks in the pretty picture soon begin to form. Jack is haunted by dreams, dreams of the past, of the earth's past, of his own past but this cannot be so; for reasons of security his and Vic's memories had been scrubbed before they began the mission. Yet in his mind he sees himself in New York, on the Empire State Building, with a strange woman.

On top of that, the woman who speaks to them from Mission Control is down right creepy. A space craft, a human space craft, suddenly crashes on to the earth and Jack learns that all is not as it seems. So now we are in a dystopia, another one of my favorite sci fi genres; think Logan's Run, where the policeman keeping the law soon comes to realize that the law may just be a bit fucked up. It just gets worse. Enter Morgan Freeman.

Jack is shocked to learn that there are other humans still on Earth. Morgan and his band of grubby survivors are here to point out to Jack that the war may not be over, or it may not be exactly as it may seem. The spacecraft has a survivor, as portrayed by Olga Kurylenko, and it is the woman Jack has been seeing in his dreams. Morgan sets them out on a mission, into the radioactive zone, suggesting that out there, Jack may find his destiny. Yup, now we are in The Planet of the Apes, only without the apes and a motorcycle instead of a horse

I want to avoid spoilers here, as Oblivion is still in theatres, but before the movie ends, several more sci fi cliches are thrown into the mix. The movie begins and it moves some place but there are a few logic jumps in the middle and I'm not sure if the timeline works. The movie is strangely devoid of emotion, even when the story demands it.

Oblivion was directed by Joseph Kosinski, who also did Tron Legacy. I quite enjoyed Tron Legacy. It was completely gorgeous to look at, it had a lot of momentum that carried you along, tension was built and it actually had an emotional core. Oblivion is certainly gorgeous to look at, its post apocalyptic Earth is one of the most impressive I've ever seen.

There is action in the movie, quite well done, from high level physical stunts to nicely filmed flight and fight sequences. After all, this is a Tom Cruise movie, so you get your Top Gun moments and your obligatory Tom-running-with-emotion moments. But, oddly, the tension never really seems to build. While I admire the movie for its slow build, and there are some great action sequences, I never really felt pulled into the story, I wanted to know what was going to happen but I never needed to know. Unlike Tron, the movie lacks a strong emotional connection, I was interested but not invested. Some of this actually makes sense, some of the characters seem devoid of emotion and I understand the reasoning but it was still difficult to be concerned with them

Oblivion is very much a pastiche and not as entertaining or compelling as B Movie pastiches that Quentin Tarantino throws together, but in the long run, I think it works. It's a good vehicle for Cruise, not as powerful as Minority Report but the kind of thing this dude can pull off. It hones very close to Matrix-style mind fucks but never gets there but its a very entertaining suburb. It won't rank as one of the best sci fi movies I've ever seen but I know a lot of these images will stick in my head; and when you're my age, any memory that sticks is worth something ... much as the memories of a life he may or may not have lead stays with Jack in a world where the Moon bleeds across the sky.

R.I.P. RICHIE HAVENS & GEORGE JONES: THE WORLD CHANGES

One man sang of peace and love. He thought that he could change the world. Not because he had more wisdom or power than the rest of us, but because thought that all of us have power and that all of us could change the world, if we really desired to do so.

Another man sang about life, about the sadness of life, about the strength of life; of losing of cheating of regret, of hanging on. He approached the world one person at a time, one story at a time, one song at a time, by showing us who we are and what we've done and the consequences thereof.

Richie Havens was a singer who rose to instant national and international prominence with his performance at the original Woodstock. Richie was the opening act, in broad daylight, before the soon to be legendary crowd had surged onto the farm land. That image is forever etched in my mind: Richie, alone on the stage, just with his acoustic guitar, shouting out Freedom/Motherless Child.

It's an absolutely riveting performance. Richie's eyes are closed, he is slightly rocking back and forth on his chair, his hand a blur as he worked the string on his guitar. His voice is raspy and strong and filled with emotion and entirely on key.

Richie's message was one of peace and understanding and it was a message of which he sang right up until his death last week. That is to be commended, many artists from that time period jumped on the peace wagon because it was the fashion of the moment, Mr Havens rode that train his entire life because it was taking him to the only destination that, for him, made sense.

For me though, as a kid, Richie showed me that a solo performer with an acoustic instrument could rock just as hard as a band full of electricity. I had yet to discover people like Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson who, could, with one similar instrument convey worlds or emotion and feeling and yes, rock out.

George Jones was no rocker and there was very little politics in his music. But George Jones was a country bluesman. His music, melodically, had very little in common with John Lee Hooker, or Johnson or but in terms of his lyrics, he was a bluesman. There are powerful connections between traditional country music and traditional blues; many people feel that the combination of the two created rock n roll.

George sang of loss, of heartache, of regret, good old fashioned cheatin songs in a controlled voice that nonetheless was easily able to control emotion. When I heard of his recent passing I flashbacked to my mother dancing in her kitchen and singling along to the lyrics as George played from the radio.

Although I grew up listening to George's music I wasn't a fan, he was a little too "country" for me, I more gravitated to artists like Johnny Cash who could integrate elements of rock and even pop into his music. But as I listen to what passes as country now, essentially watered down pop music sang with a twang, I can admire George for his authenticity.

Richie Havens and George Jones, at first glance, seem to be worlds apart. The socially active hippie who appeared in a kaftan and the Nashville showman who favored sequined suits. But Authentic is the word that can be applied to both men; they were inspired by a vision and they stuck to it for their entire careers.

Change the world by singing about the world, change the world by singing about the individuals in said room. Be real, be passionate, hang on to the end.

And when you pass, the world will notice, it will indeed be changed by that fact.

NO DON'T LOOK HERE, LOOK OVER THERE!

It's been about a year since I posted anything on my other blog, dedicated to video creation, but festival season is once again upon us so that blog is becoming active

There, that was fair warning. Don't blame me

So don't look here, look down there ....


Idiot With A Camera

Good luck

THINGS WE'VE LOST

We lose people. Throughout our lives we lose people, we're careless that way.

We find people, people come into our lives, or people are already there as our lives begin. People find us and we find them.

But for every person you find, you have people you lose. Generally the people who are there when you come into the world are people you will eventually lose. Parents, grandparents, those people who welcomed you, eventually you will usher them out.

That's how life works.

Then you have the people you find; friends, work mates, life mates. You will lose some of those as well and I don't just mean to death, though of course that can happen as well. I mean losing people, the people who pass into your life will also pass out. Not everyone but if you're honest, most of them. I know people who have literal life long friends, I know people who marry their child hood friends. I know people who meet people in high school, college, their first job, who will be with them at the end.

That happens.

But you will lost more people than the ones you hang on to. That's life too, it's natural. From school, from work, from some social situation, you will find someone, you will become friends then somewhere along the line, you will lose them, they will pass away.

Sometimes you will lose them to enmity, to a falling out, to a disagreement that cannot be overcome. Others will just pass away, go to college, to another job, to another person. No disagreement, just moving on, passing through.

Tony Lever was my best friend in high school. I can say that with as much conviction as I can say anything. We actually met in grade eight, at Kingscourt Public School in Kingston. Tony pretty much lived across the street from the school. Our highschool, Q.E., was a couple more blocks up the street. In those days you could do five years in high school and Tony and I were close friends through all those years.

We were considered, by many people, to be an odd couple. Way back then in the 70's Tony was pretty much the definition of a preppie. I was pretty much the definition of "that long haired weirdo" I was known as a poet and a writer, Tony was a genius. No, really, he was. He would average 100 on some of his academic scores .. average .. 100. I never really understood that but still, he did.

Back in those days about the only fiction I read was either classical Greek or science fiction. Tony would look at the cover of my latest intergalactic adventure and go "Oh, ok" Tony liked, mostly, what music was playing on the radio, I tended towards pretentious noodling like Van derGraf Generator or early Roxy Music.

On the surface, we didn't have a lot in common. Neither of us were into sports, we both like music and art even if we diverged a bit in taste. Tony had a great sense of humour, it was sly and subtle, the dude was smart and it carried over to his wit.

Tony was interested in architecture and art history and had many opportunities to study abroad, I know he spend time in Venice on some kind of scholarship. So Tony passed out of my life to pursue his passions. I re connected with him once more, in the early 80's, he had just moved to Toronto and had a little apartment down on Church Street and was decorating the bathroom ceiling with kites.

That was the last time I saw him. I recently read that Tony had passed, he died last year after fighting cancer for four years. He was living in Toronto and had been working at Revenue Canada. He was a couple years younger me. It's sad that he died so young and it's tragic that he had to fight so hard for so long to stay alive.

It's sad that we passed out of each others lives but not a huge sadness. We were friends the entire time we knew each other, we never had a rift or a falling out, we just passed out of each others lives. I lost Tony, he lost me but we found our own lives, our own partners, our own futures.

Losing someone is not always a loss. It can be a sign of growth, for both of you.

We lose people. We find ourselves.

FUTURE IMPERFECT, PRESENT PRETTY DAMN GOOD

When I was a kid there was a fair amount of sci fi on TV, from the very good like Star Trek to the not so great like Time Tunnel. Sci fi has always been on TV but its popularity ebbs and flows. Now, with speciality channels like Syfy in the States and Space here, there is more sci fi than ever before.

Kids, it ain't all good. But recently I've began watching two new sci fi series, both of them locally produced.

Orphan Black is not only shot in Toronto, it actually takes place in Toronto. Produced by BBC America and airing on Space with episodes available on Space.ca

Defiance is also shot  in Toronto but it definitely is not set here. It's actually an American show, produced for Syfy channel and it's airing on Showtime.

Both shows are locally produced but that's about where the similarities end. Defiance, is a fairly traditional sci fi series; it's set on a future Earth in a time where visiting aliens, several different races, have tried to make a home here to the point of terraforming the planet, we sort of objected to this concept, we fight a war and now there is a draw, with the Earth basically in ruins.

Our hero is a human with an alien "adopted daughter" and they find themselves in the city of Defiance which exists in the ruins of St. Louis. It is a frontier outpost besieged by raiders, beset by culture clashes, dominated by a wealthy miner and filled with prostitutes, gamblers and fighters. The hero finds himself in a situation where he has to serve as the town's Lawkeeper. Yeh, it's a Western.

Now, sci fi Westerns are nothing new, it's a fairly traditional hybrid. Also familiar is the concept of several different races, human and alien, trying to co exist together. That's one of the basic premises of most space operas, from Star Trek to Babylon Five.

Also traditional is how these alien races are presented; some weird contact lenses, an application over the nose, some funky hair and voila we have an alien; maybe allow a race to be able to manipulate energy, make another race very tribal, another race warriors who indulge in body modifications .. and don't think about much else. Why make a character an alien if he's going to act exactly like a human being, with the same motivations, the same desires, the same physical and facial expressions.

The show is well produced, the main character as portrayed by Grant Bowler is entertaining, the cynical ex soldier with the heart of gold, again not entirely original but Bowler makes him watchable. Graham Greene portrays the mine owner but as much as admire Greene, he seems to be phoning in his performance. The town's resident bad guys are so stereotypically evil they're almost laughable.

The series is handsomely made, and there may be some hope for it, the backstory certainly needs to be filled in and perhaps we'll learn more things about these aliens that will make them compelling. There is an ongoing mystery as set up in the first episode and lots of possibilities to make it interesting but that could be a long journey. Let's hope it will be worth it.

Orphan Black is also a mystery but that's where any similarity with Defiance ends. Where Defiance is clearly sci fi, fitting neatly into a couple of sub genres thereof, Orphan Black at first glance, barely qualifies

In the first episode we meet Sarah, a young woman oprhaned in her native Britain and brought here to Canada. She is not your typical hero; grifter, thief, drifter, selector of horrible boyfriends, she has a daughter whom she has not seen in 10 months. Standing on a train platform she watches a woman deliberately jump in front of a train, and the woman looks exactly like her ...

From here on in Orphan Black functions pretty much as a mystery. The sci fi component comes in the form of the fact that there seem to be several Sarahs. She starts out assuming the identity of the dead woman in order to rob her and finds herself quite quickly, way over her head.

There is a classic kind of thriller where an innocent person finds themselves involved in a dangerous fast moving conspiracy. I've always enjoyed these kinds of stories and so far, a couple of episodes in, Orphan Black seems a fine example. Of course, Sarah may not be as innocent as she feels and this just adds to the fun

Whereas Defiance fills its story with a lot of cliches and characters unrealized, one of the things I enjoy most about Orphan Black are indeed the characters. Sarah is a conflicted character, all of her choices are entirely selfish and venal and she rushes forward far more than she thinks. Part of the fun is how other versions of her come with entirely different persepectives

The scripts are really good, there is attention to detail and more importantly a really clever sense of humour. But this concept wouldn't work without a really strong actor and Tatiana Maslany delivers a really stunning performance, it's really going to be fun to watch her as all the Sarahs.

I'm already pretty much hooked on Orphan Black. Now, I've been burnt by these kinds of stories before, there's always the possibility that the story will unravel or just come to a screeching halt. But the performances and the witty script is worth the risk.

I'll check out another episode of Defiance but it has a lot to prove me. I defiantly wait for it to prove itself .. yes, I went there, shut up.

So choose as you will: A future story far from perfect and a story set in the present that is not perfect, but pretty damn good.