Another NFB classic. I remember watching this film as a young boy in elementary school and today I was able to watch it together with my 11 year old daughter. Perhaps one day she will share this with her children.
I’ve seen a documentary on the making of this Oscar winning short about Canadian animator Ryan Larkin and his troubled life but never had the chance to see the film itself. Now the NFB have made the film itself available.
Listen to the new Rosanne Cash record in it’s entirety, complete with guest vocals from Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Tweedy, and Neko Case.
Tom Waits, Billy Childish to Judge Raindance Film Fest
Our favorite cryptic troubadour Tom Waits has been turning quite a bit of attention to film of late, including taking on a starring role as Mr. Nick (aka Satan) in Heath Ledger’s final film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, playing an engineer in an upcoming Denzel Washington-starring action flick, and now by judging an indie film festival.
The Raindance Film Festival, which begins its run in London later this month, is famous for screening independent films by Quentin Tarantin, Christopher Nolan, and Waits’ friend/collaborator Anton Corbijn. What makes this festival even more different, however, is that it has hosted some of our favorite musicians in the past, including Beastie Boy Adam “MCA” Yauch, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Marky Ramone, The Clash’s Mick Jones, and more.
Press Association reports that this year’s judges panel will include Waits, Riz Ahmed, Kerry Fox, Armando Iannucci, and British musician, poet, and jack-of-all-trades Billy Childish. If they have as good taste in films as they do in musicians, this year’s roster should be a real treat.
Meanwhile, the trailer for The Book of Eli, starring Waits, Denzel Washington, Gary Oldham, and Mila Kunis dropped recently. Check it out here.
On the way home we were feeling hungry so we decided to see if there was anyone playing at Sam’s Place. It turns out that Justin Lacroix was just ending his set. The cinnamon buns were tasty but should have been warmed up, and the coffee was excellent. Since we arrived just before closing and right at the end of Justin’s set I can’t really comment on the music. From what little I heard, it sounded promising.
Thus ended the Date Night.
After Kelly Hughes Live, we didn’t feel like going home and couldn’t think of a movie we wanted to see so we went to The Forks and watched this fire juggler. We wandered around The Forks for a while but since it was after 9:00, everything was pretty much shutting down so we left.
Bookstore Owner Kelly Hughes’ first guest was local writer Michael Van Rooy. What followed was a very funny interview that centered mostly around cheese making inside Stony Mountain Penitentiary (little known fact that Van Rooy spent 8 months as a guest at Stony… I probably shouldn’t be telling anyone this but since no one reads my blog, it doesn’t really matter).
After dinner we took our coffees upstairs and scored prime seats near the front (since we were the only people in the room at the time we could choose the best seats in the house). Mennonite Bluesman Bush Wiebe was already on stage and started playing some excellent blues instrumentals. This guy plays a mean slide… loved it. Throughout the night he would go on to play a handful of excellent blues with hilarious Mennonite centric lyrics.
The story of the Mennonite preachers with their boots and long dark coats brought back childhood memories of my grandfather who was one of them. One of my early childhood memories is sitting in the balcony of the Chortitzer Mennonite Church in Steinbach, looking down on the men on the left side of the isle, women on the right, with my grandfather and six or seven other stern looking men in long dark coats up front.
Loved every bit of it and would love to see a full show by Bush.
Date night
To celebrate the start of the long weekend Ann and I decided to go on a little date (no kids). The day before we heard that Bookstore Owner Kelly Hughes was putting together Kelly Hughes Live and when we saw that the musical guest was a Mennonite bluesman from Steinbach there was no more debate so off we went. We started out with a nice dinner at Eat! bistro located right in Aqua books, where Kelly Hughes live was taking place. The salad was okay, the BBQ pork pizza was excellent, and the coffee was average. The posts that follow tell the rest of the story.
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