A CHRISTMAS TALE
UN CONTE DE NOËL
France 2008
DIR Arnaud Desplechin
CAST Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny, Melvil Poupaud, Emmanuelle Devos,Chiara Mastroianni, Emile Berling, Hippolyte Girardot, Laurent Capelluto

Christmas 2011

Beppi: Initially sweet, it soon becomes spicy, then serves up coal dust and smoke, like a potable Dickens novel. A salty tang balances the sweetness on the gently oaky, dry finish. Laphroaig is Prince Charles’s favourite. The future king knows his dram – a good sign for the monarchy. 95/100. 

2009 Church & State Coyote Bowl Syrah this year’s Red Wine of the Year at the Wine Access Canadian Wine Awards! In a handy 3-pak from my favourite daughter with the 2009 Pinot Noir frm the Brentwood Bay vineyard and the 2010 Gewurtztraminer from the Okanagan Black Sage Bench Gravelbourg vineyard.

Diego Rivera, Maternidad (Motherhood), 1954. Collection of Michael Audain and Yoshiko Karasawa.

Largest Canadian Collection of Mexican Modernism
On Display Now at Vancouver Art Gallery
VANCOUVER- As a university student, Michael Audain travelled to Mexico to view the art of Mexican modernist masters Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. He was inspired by the vibrancy and powerful social message of their art, and his passion for these artists remained with him. Many years later, the Audains began collecting their work and, today, own the largest collection of Mexican modernist art known in Canada . The Audains’ entire Mexican modernist collection – 18 paintings in all – is currently on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery in Shore, Forest and Beyond: Art from the Audain Collection, providing an unparalleled opportunity for visitors to experience this influential school of art. “This is the largest and most important Mexican modernist collection in Canada ,” said Grant Arnold , the Gallery’s Audain Curator of British Columbia Art, “These paintings are fine examples of the art of each of these artists, and have never been publicly displayed by the Audains before.”

Museo Nacional del Prado: The Wine of Saint Martin’s Day by Bruegel the Elder

12 December 2011 -25 March 2012
The Museo del Prado is presenting to the public for the first time The Wine of Saint Martin’s Day by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, acquired by the museum in late 2010. The painting, one of the most important acquisitions in the Museo del Prado history, is temporarily on display in Room D in the Jerónimos Building and its installation allows the public to realize what a delicate and complex restoration process

Museo Nacional del Prado: Special display: The Wine of Saint Martin’s Day by Bruegel the Elder

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS
United States 1986
DIR Woody Allen
SCR Woody Allen
CAST Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest, Michael Caine, Barbara Hershey,Max von Sydow

CERTIFIED COPY
COPIE CONFORME
France, Iran, Italy, 2010

DIR Abbas Kiarostami
SCR Abbas Kiarostami
CAST Juliette Binoche, William Shimell

From the notes: What is the difference between a copy and the original, between reality and its imitation? This is the question in all its elusive permutations that the gorgeous Juliette Binoche who manages an antique shop and Art Historian William Shimell (England's distinguished operatic baritone) argue about as they drive through the sun-drenched splendour of Tuscany. In his first film made outside of his native Iran, Kiarostami has shifted from his neorealist style to the brain teasing European Modernism of Antonioni and Resnais. We may never know the true relationship of Binoche and Shimell, but the trip is glorious, and it won the best actress award at Cannes for her luminous performance.

And back on Monday Sept 12...
CACHÉ

France, Austria, Germany, Italy, United States 2005
DIR Michael Haneke
SCR Michael Haneke
CAST Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche





And again on Aug 14.
Algerian protest reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961

Curt Lang, Granville Street, 1972

DECEMBER 1, 2011, 7:30 PM
At the World’s Edge—
Curt Lang’s Vancouver: 1937–1998

READING AND SLIDE SHOW WITH AUTHOR CLAUDIA CORNWALL, PRESENTATION HOUSE
Claudia will read from a few selected chapters including: Wild and Memorable Poets, Naked in the VAG, Smoking Gideon, and Dreaming in Black and White. She will also show slides from Curt’s 1972 Portfolio. Foreword by David Beers. Introduction by Greg Lang.

ArtDaily.org:
British Museum Announces Major Aquisition of Complete Set of Picasso's Vollard Suite

LONDON.- The British Museum announces the major acquisition of a complete set of Picasso’s Vollard Suite, which will go on display at the Museum in the summer of 2012. The suite comprises 100 etchings produced by Picasso between 1930 and 1937 and is the most important cycle of etchings produced by arguably the 20th century’s most important artist. This will be the only complete Vollard Suite held by a public museum in the UK and only a handful of museums in the world are fortunate to hold a set. It is believed that this will be the first time a complete Vollard Suite has been shown in Britain in the past 50 years.

POETRY
SHI
South Korea 2010
DIR Lee Chang-dong
SCR Lee Chang-dong
CAST Yoon Jeong-hee, Lee Da-wit

From the notes: Chang-dong, director of the brilliant Secret Sunshine, continues his exploration of Korea's socio-political fault-lines in this award winning film (Best Screenplay, Cannes). Bringing the amazing Junghee out of retirement, Poetry is the story of the elderly Yang Miha who lives in a dormitory town outside of Seoul. Looking after her troubled teen grandson Wook and working part-time as a care-giver for a disabled man. Miha discovers poetry and a new way of seeing in a poetry writing class. A visually stunning film, Poetry explores the surprising growth in Miha's identity as she must find a way to negotiate balancing her new-found art with her grandson's implication in a classmate's suicide.

Liam Lacy in the Globe Fri Sept 30, 2011

Actually, film-not-seen. Instead.... Wally and the Slugs and some guy who's name I think is Ted at the Port Theatre... 
http://www.dougandtheslugs.ca/

Gabor Maté — Colloquium SeriesAdler School of Professional Psychology

Watch live streaming video from adlerevents at livestream.com

Georgia OKeefe Watercolor Star No VI, 1917

SANTA FE.- Evening Star No. VI, 1917, a gift of The Burnett Foundation. The watercolor is one of dozens of iconic OKeeffe paintings that will be exhibited over the next year in Italy, Germany and Finland as part of a traveling retrospective. 

AP Photo/The Georgia OKeeffe Museum. ArtDaily,org

Fred Herzog — Old Man Main, 1959

Past Tense • liquidnight: Fred Herzog Old Man Main, 1959 ...

Fred Herzog Old Man Main, 1959 From Fred Herzog: Photographs

EYES WIDE OPEN
EINAYM PKUHOT
Israel, Germany, France 2009
DIR Haim Tabakman
CAST Zohar Strauss, Ran Danker, Tinkerbell, Tzahi Grad, Isaac Sharry, Avi Grainik

From the notes: Provocative albeit understated about a married Orthodox Jewish father of four who falls for a 22 year old male student. Aaron, a butcher who lives a very conservative life in the ultra-Orthodox part of Jerusalem, takes on Ezri, a handsome Yeshiva scholar, as an apprentice. Aaron, who feels an emptiness in his life, battles with but is drawn to the young man's attractive lustfulness in a world of extreme intolerance. A film which challenges a man's relationship with his family, community and God. Eyes generated considerable controversy but still won Best Actor Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

Charles Foran – Mordecai, Dear Maw

“If your old age tastes of ashes,” Mordecai Richler wrote in August, 1976, “if you are wretched, lonely, worried about your health, money, I am sorry. But now that you are 70, can't you at last grasp that you have brought most of this on yourself.”

“Will your life,” he continued, “such a ball of rage, inchoate rage, go forever unexamined?” He then proceeded to examine that life with no less acuity, or plain speech.
Read more: Charles Foran – Mordecai, Dear Maw:

'via Blog this'

CBC.ca | The Current | Interviews

Audio: CBC.ca | The Current | Interviews

Vancouver doctor treats patients with illegal plant

We started this segment with Vancouver doctor Gabor Mate speaking with one of his patients. Gabor Mate has treated addicts in the downtown eastside of Vancouver for years. But he hasn't had great success. His frustration led him to look beyond traditional medicine for answers ... All the way to the Peruvian jungle and its promise of better treatments.
Traditional Peruvian healers use an ancient plant, the Ayahuasca in a ceremony that involves drinking a concoction made from the plant. It can be a tough cure, the potion can cause hallucinations and often vomiting. But Dr. Mate says he's seen results.
Tonight on the The Nature of Things, Gabor Mate's medical quest will be featured in a documentary called Jungle Prescription. Gabor Mate joined us from our Vancouver studio.

The Sidewalk Ballet: Eastside Mural Projects

The Sidewalk Ballet: Eastside Mural Projects: A quartet of four community-based murals sponsored by Britannia Community Services Society and coordinated by Richard Tetrault has been pain...

The Jungle Prescription — CBC, Nov 10, 8:00pm

The Jungle Prescription - Film Trailer from The Ayahuasca Project on Vimeo.

JEANNE DIELMAN
23, QUAI DU COMMERCE
1080 BRUXELLES
Belgium, France
1975 201 Min(!)
DIR Chantal Akerman
CAST Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte

OF GODS AND MEN
DES HOMMES ET DES DIEUX
France 2010

DIR Xavier Beauvois
SCR Xavier Beauvois, Etienne Comar
CAST Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin,Jacques Herlin, Sabrina Ouazani, Goran Kostić, Philippe Laudenbach, Xavier Maly, Jean-Marie Frin, Loïc Pichon

"A beautiful, sombre and rigorously intelligent film" -- O.S. Scott. Based on the true story of eight Cistercian Trappist monks whose lives of contemplation and of humble service to their impoverished Moslem community in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria are disrupted by the country's ruthless and protracted civil war of the 1990s. The government offers military protection, which is unthinkable to these men of peace. Instead they are left with the choice of returning to France and abandoning their duty or of remaining at the risk of their lives. The beauty of the environment, the soundtrack of chanted prayers and muezzin calls, and the touching relationships that these men have formed — all contribute to make this a singularly memorable film. Winner of the Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes and French  César Award for Best Film.

Marvellous, now famous  "last supper" scene is very fine but a story hung on the Catholic Church in the colonized world gives me all kinds of problems.

Nina Rajinsky, Vancouver Art Gallery, January 1980

The Hidden World of Vivian Maier

Uploaded to YouTube  by kitchensisters on 1 Feb 2011

Back in March, we blogged about a recently discovered photographer, Vivian Maier. We had the chance to interview John Maloof, the man who brought her photos to the world. Since then, two years after her death, she has been recognized as one of the most fascinating street photographers of the 20th century as more and more people around the world have fallen in love with her work.

Today, the Chicago Cultural Center is opening her first solo exhibition. In her honor, we bring you this slide show of some of her stunning images, along with her story told by John Maloof and renowned photographer, Mary Ellen Mark.

Produced by Lacy Roberts for The Kitchen Sisters and The Hidden World of Girls

Myles by the Brother

 The Irish Times, Sat. Oct 1 2011

In the following extracts from 'The Brother (Myles)', artist Micheál Ó Nualláin reflects on the hard life of his older sibling. MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH BRIAN (MYLES) 

Illustration: Oil on canvas. 1948. Flann O'Brien by his brother Micheál Ó Nualláin. Collection of Boston College, USA.



I MADE MY first acquaintance with Brian as far back as 1932, yet I remember this as if it happened yesterday. I was four years old at the time. I was out on the raised lawn in our back garden on a beautiful summer’s day. I was wearing a floppy summer hat and a child’s suit with two ducks in front staring at each other. I was amusing myself with a hatchet, or as Maureen Potter would have called it, a hacha. Brian must have seen me from one of the windows at the back of the house and rushed out to ensure that I would not do myself a grave injury. I remember seeing him approaching me up the steps. He had a pale white face and two slightly prominent front teeth, like those of a rabbit. He came up to me and said in Irish (which was the language of our home) “Tabháir Damh” (the north of Ireland dialect; “Tabhair Dom” in Munster).

Keith Richards Talks About 'Life'The New York Public Library

Stones Guitarist Keith Richards Talks About 'Life' from The New York Public Library on FORA.tv

POLICE, ADJECTIVE
POLIŢIST, ADJECTIV
Romania 2009
DIR Corneliu Porumboiu
PROD Corneliu Porumboiu
SCR Corneliu Porumboiu
CAST Dragoş Bucur, Vlad Ivanov
Ah... film not seen. Here's the notes: Porumboiu, a leading figure in the New Romanian Wave, and director of the witty and trenchant 12:08 East of Bucharest, has scored again with a wonderfully mordant satire, this time of the police and bureaucracy of "justice". Cristi, a reluctant undercover cop, is on stake-out, engaged in the tedia of  procedural police work as he stakes out the movements of a suspected/potential young drug dealer. As Cristi becomes more and more convinced of his "stalkee" he comes face to face with the absurd Kafkaesque legal system through a brilliant parodic linguistic analysis of the job he has undertaken and the issues of personal moral responsibility.


Instead: 

Brilliant, inspired serendipity of scheduling — Centre Stage not available so this terrific Morris Panych play was performed in the basement of the Acme Food Co. restaurant. At one point head dishwasher Dressler shakes a raised fist to the ceiling and says he wants to go up and gouge out the eyes of the diners with an escargot fork.

NINE LIVES
United States 2005
DIR Rodrigo García
EXEC Alejandro González Iñárritu
SCR Rodrigo García
CAST Amanda Seyfried, William Fichtner, Elpidia Carrillo, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Joe Mantegna, Stephen Dillane, Aidan Quinn,Robin Wright, Molly Parker, Kathy Baker, Dakota Fanning, Glenn Close, Sissy Spacek, Holly Hunter, Amy Brenneman, Jason Isaacs, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Ian McShane, Mary Kay Place

Friday Night Film Class 2011

STILL WALKING
ARUITEMO ARUITEMO
Japan 2008
DIR Hirokazu Kore-eda
SCR Hirokazu Kore-eda
CAST You, Hiroshi Abe, Yoshio Harada

A middle aged brother and sister gather with their own families for a visit to the seaside home of their elderly parents. The occasion is the annual commemoration of their older brother who died tragically in a drowning accident fifteen years earlier. During the course of a single summer day, Kore-eda (After Life, Nobody Knows) — one of the grand masters of contemporary world cinema, in the tradition of Ozu and Naruse — gently reveals the family fissures, the unresolved grievances, resentments, disappointments, and bouts of pettiness that have gnawed away over the years, especially for Ryota, the disenfranchised second son. It's a touching universal story, acutely observed, recognized in moments of enlightenment, even grace.

THE TREE OF LIFE
United States 2011

DIR Terrence Malick
SCR Terrence Malick
CAST Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Sean Penn,Fiona Shaw

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER
TODO SOBRE MI MADRE
Spain, France 1999
DIR Pedro Almodóvar
SCR Pedro Almodóvar
CAST Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña, Antonia San Juan, Penélope Cruz

Douro Valley, Portugal — Vila Regia

 BILL ZACHARKIW, Montreal Gazette
Douro 2009, Vila Regia, Sogrape, Portugal red, $10.10, SAQ # 464388. Dark fruit and lumbering, but bursting with that Douro power. No effort here to round off the edges, so if you want a wine that has torque and screams Douro, here you go – and all for $10.10. Serve at 16C. Drink now-2011. Food pairing idea: spicy sausages.

The Vila Regia was the “rawest” (of 3 Douros tasted) – lots of fruit, not a lot of complexity, and without the polished tannins of the other wines. This, I assumed, meant that it spent little or no time in oak barrels. To me, this is a sign that the grapes came from younger vines, which usually tend to produce softer fruit flavours with less complexity. There is always room for a well made $10 wine, especially one that speaks so genuinely of where it is from – and is unpretentious and simple.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Wine+primer+pricing/5513411/story.html#ixzz1ad7u7Z79

The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avante Garde at SFMOMA

Bill Reid Foundation Gift to SFU

VOLVER
Spain 2006
DIR Pedro Almodóvar
SCR Pedro Almodóvar
CAST Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo, Chus Lampreave, Antonio de la Torre,Carlos Blanco, María Isabel Díaz, Neus Sanz

What Was There

Western Edge Production of Copper Thunderbird

SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH
United States 1962
DIR Richard Brooks
SCR Tennessee Williams, Richard Brooks
CAST Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Shirley Knight, Ed Begley,Rip Torn

INCENDIES
Canada, France 2010
DIR Denis Villeneuve
SCR Denis Villeneuve, Wajdi Mouawad, Valérie Beaugrand-Champagne
CAST Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Rémy Girard, 

Hockney in Los Angeles: Prints From the 70's and 80's

DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)

Celia, 8365 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, 1973
Lithograph

47 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches, Arches mould-made
Edition of 46 plus 21 proofs
Signed, dated and numbered

Leslie Sacks Fine Art, Los Angeles

Adventures in the Skin Trade: Colum McCann & Michael Ondaatje in Conversation

PEN World Voices. New York City Public Library

BETTY BLUE
37°2 LE MATIN
France 1986

DIR Jean-Jacques Beineix
CAST Jean-Hugues Anglade, Béatrice Dalle

AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD
AGUIRRE, DER ZORN GOTTES
West Germany 1972

DIR Werner Herzog
SCR Werner Herzog
CAST Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo, Del Negro,

River of Crows (McLean Drive Mural Project)

River of Crows is the is the name of the mural on the Britannia track and field westside retaining wall on McLean Drive. The final paint and seal was completed July 19, 2011.

On the River of Crows (Mclean Drive Mural Project) from http://richard-tetrault.blogspot.com/​

McLean Drive mural project began with planning/design sessions in spring 2011. The mural is situated along the McLean Drive bike route from Parker to William Streets, on a retaining wall bordering the oval track of Britannia High School, and will animate the length of the wall in a sequence that will make the wall into an active space. Walkers, cyclists and drivers will experience the flight of migrating crows, from night to day across the wall. Stencils and printed images designed through community workshops make up the majority of the imagery. The wall's lower section reflects plant, seed and insect life.

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

— William Butler Yeats

Strathcona, Vancouver's Oldest Neighbourhood, Celebrates the City's 125th Anniversary, Sept 25

August 22, 1951, Florence, Italy

JOHN ALLEMANG
From Saturday's Globe and MailPublished Friday, Aug. 12, 2011

A great photograph can’t remain static: It has a subsequent life-history much like that of its subjects.

An American Girl in Italy, Ruth Orkin’s masterly evocation of time and place, turns 60 on August 22, and that frozen moment in post-war Florence is now being feted as one of the camera’s most vivid achievements. Is it possible to look at the black-and-white image Ms. Orkin caught in the Piazza della Repubblica and not feel a part of the passing scene?

ANOTHER YEAR
United Kingdom, 2010
DIR Mike Leigh
SCR Mike Leigh




CAST Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen, Stuart McQuarrie, Martin Savage, David Bradley, Peter Wright, Imelda Staunton, Karina Fernandez, Oliver Maltman, Philip Davis

Beppi Scores Both 90/100

Santa Rita Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon 2008, Chile
Plum, chocolate and a classic Chilean note of mint rest on a tannic spine. It has an invigorating acidity with a dollop of spice on the finish. Great value.



Emiliana Adobe Reserva Syrah 2009, Chile
Full, dark and plummy, this drinks like a wine twice its price. And it shows impressive varietal character, with a classic Rhone Valley syrah dusting of cracked pepper and chewy tannins. Pair it with roast game birds or braised red meats.

PUEBLA.- People look at a 1990s Volkswagen Beetle named Vochol during an exhibition on Huichol culture at the Museum of Puebla, near Mexico City August 10, 2011. The name Vochol, was conceived from a combination of Vochoa popular term for Volkswagen Beetles in Mexico and Huichol, a Mexican indigenous group. The car was decorated by indigenous craftmen from the Huichol community living in the states of Nayarit and Jalisco, using traditional beads and fabric. According to local media, the work will be auctioned after its exhibition in Paris and Berlin next year, with proceeds going to the Huichols. REUTERS/Imelda Mediana.

REAR WINDOW
United States
1954
DIR Alfred Hitchcock
CAST James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr

Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

Art, Truth & Politics 

In 1958 I wrote the following:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

A critic's guide to Vancouver Island wineries

BEPPI CROSARIOL 

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Tuesday, Aug. 02, 2011 

Each spring at Averill Creek Vineyard on Vancouver Island, the slopes take on a peculiar look. Where you would expect to see verdant vines, the vista is obscured by sheets of grey plastic, draped over each row in an inverted V shape to form elongated tents. They’re temporary greenhouses, designed to harness heat and accelerate foliage growth until the warm weather arrives.