Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I remember way back when I was a student at McGill, I took a course on 20th century American Literature. Being Canadian, I was never required to read The Great Gatsby in High School so Fitzgerald was new to me. I took the course because I was interested in Hemmingway by I left a fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

When I was doing an essay on Gatsby, I came across a series of anecdotes about Fitzgerald's relationship with Charles Scribner. It turns out that in the early drafts of the novel, Gatsby's entire background was revealed toward the end of the story. My guess is that it was probably during the hotel scene. Scribner told Fitzgerald that it was boring, too much explanation for a final chapter where the story should be building to its climax. At the advice of his publisher, Fitzgerald changed this part of the novel around, placing more of Gatsby's past earlier in the novel. The result, of course, is tightly woven, fast paced and exciting story worthy of its reputation as an American Classic.

Too bad JK Rowling's publisher wasn't Charles Scribner.

Don't get me wrong. In my opinion, this woman's epic tale of young Harry Potter, the only person to ever survive the Avada Kedavra curse of the evil Lord Voldemort and the subject of the secret prophecy that foresees only Harry or Voldemort's survival is a classic in its own right. I've thoroughly enjoyed every installment to the series and the Half-Blood Prince is no exception. But, at the same time, I have to admit that The Half-Blood Prince is the weakest of the series.

Thanks to the great wizard Dumbledore, Harry takes us on a series of flashbacks into the life of his nemesis Lord Voldemorte, aka Tom Riddle. We see how Riddle started out in life and how he his desire for power eventually consumed him, despite the best efforts of Obi-Wan…err Dumbledore to keep him from turning to the Dark Side. We finally see what his evil plan actually is and, thankfully, learn what the ending to the second book, The Chamber of Secrets, actually has to do with the series' overall arc.

Unfortunately, it is just so much flashback, so much last-minute explanation that the main story of the novel, the penultimate of the series, gets short-changed.

The main story revolves around three points: the new Professor Slughorn, Draco Malfoy, and of course, the Half-Blood Prince.

Harry is finally getting good grades in Potions class thanks to the notes written in his used textbook, notes written by the mysterious Half-Blood Prince. One can't help but feel that if more time were devoted to this part of the novel that Rowling could have come up with a more satisfying explanation as to why Harry failed to see that the notes were ultimately dangerous.

Near the beginning of the story, Harry and Draco Malfoy have a violent confrontation that sets the stage for Harry to mistrust Malfoy more than he normally does. Despite warnings from his friends and teachers Harry finds himself stalking Malfoy, trying to catch his nemesis read handed.

And the new Professor Slughorn, gives Rowling the opportunity to take a few shots at British society. Previous volumes have dealt with Soccer Hooligans, critiques on the state of Education, and the British Government. This time she deals with British class snobbery. Only a few elite students are invited to Slughorn's tea parties. Ralph wants to be invited but never is, whereas Harry hates the occasions but always receives an invitation. Harry does his best to avoid Slughorn throughout the novel, until Dumbledore asks him several times to use his influence with the teacher to obtain a very important piece of information, something vital to winning the upcoming war with Lord Voldemort.

Rowling also uses this story to tie up loose character ends, presumably so the final installment can be devoted to Harry's final showdown with Voldemort. The characters now being sixteen, Rowling decides that she can finally delve into more romantic interests than in the previous volumes. Harry, having been disillusioned with the beautiful but shallow Cho in the previous volume, The Order of the Phoenix, now finds himself realizing that the girl for him has been right by his side for the past six years. The romance between Ralph and Hermione that had been hinted at since The Goblet of Fire, is finally resolved for better or for worse. The wizarding world at last believes Harry's story about his encounter with the Dark Lord a year earlier. Harry has a potions teacher that takes an interest in him. Hagrid is busy educating his half-brother.

Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, Harry flies off with Dumbledore on the quest that leads to the stories climax. A climax that even though, it comes out of nowhere, leads to some exciting twists and turns.

If you're one of the few people on the planet who has not heard about the novel's ending, then I'm not going to spoil it here. It does, however, raise some intriguing questions. Is Severus Snape evil or is there still some hope that he is not on the side of Voldemort? There seems to be a brief moment where Draco Malfoy is not as evil as he has been portrayed up until now and may have simply been a product of bad parenting, but is that moment gone forever? Are Harry's days at Hogwarts indeed over?

Without going into details, I couldn't help but be reminded of the final scene of the Spider-Man movie in the final pages of the book, to the point where the final lines could have been right there on the page.

Even with the scattered nature of this installment's story, the characters that Rowling has created are indeed heartwarming and lovable. We want to see them succeed. We want to see them happy. But with the increasingly foreboding nature of each volume in the Potter series, I'm forced to admit that the characters might not be as triumphant as we want them to be, nor will the series end with everyone truly happy.

Goal!

Okay, I admit that I'm a long time fan of sports films. They don't have to be classic films in order for me to find them enjoyable. Sure, some rise to the top for me. Field of Dreams is one of my favorite pieces of melodramatic cinema and still brings a tear to my eye (not that anyone will ever notice) whenever I watch it.

BEGIN SHORTREVIEW OF GOAL!

Make no mistake. Goal is not a classic film. But it is a decently put together piece and worth a rental from your local blockbuster if you like sports films. If you don't, then rent The 40 Year Old Virgin instead.

END SHORTREVIEW OF GOAL!

The story is about young Santiago Muñoz, a young illegal Mexican immigrant living in LA. He is a talented soccer player who just happens to catch the eye of a retired football scout, Glen Foy. Thanks to Foy's encouragement, Santiago travels to England in the hopes of playing for Newcastle United.

The story pulls in just about every sports-movie cliché ever used. Santiago has a poor relationship with his father who doesn't support his son's dream, Santiago fails his first time out but succeeds due to his perseverance and support from his friends, Santiago begins to hang out with another player who at first seems to be a bad influence but the two resolve their differences and become close friends, Santiago gets the woman that none of the other players on the team can get, Santiago suffers personal tragedy but then overcomes that tragedy to ultimate succeed.

Santiago also suffers an ailment, but the writers put a nice twist on this cliché. He suffers from Asthma, which of course will not hurt his chances of becoming a star, but since he is uneducated about his sickness, he keeps it a secret. This secret nearly costs him his career.

Where the movie succeeds, is in its low key nature. Unlike some of the more traditional Hollywood fair like Any Given Sunday or Remember the Titans (both films which I enjoyed, by the way), Goal! Simply seems more subdued and less over the top. Whereas the other films go out of their way to take their plots to the extremes, Goal is comfortable enough in its simplicity to just tell the story.

The other area where it succeeds is that it becomes the first major soccer film. It is simply because most high budget films are made in the US, practically the only country in the world that doesn't have a cultural emotional investment in the game, that the world's most popular sport has not received proper cinematic attention. The producers also shamelessly aimed this movie at two big non-US markets: England and Latin America.

From reading the comments of online posters, I noticed that the English audience tended to be highly critical of technical points in the film. They criticized the fact that Santiago wore a pendant on the field, that the soccer scenes weren't shot correctly, and that the Newcastle team wasn’t portrayed accurately, among other things. The Latin Americans with whom I watched the film didn't seem to care about those details and became thoroughly wrapped up in the story. Despite the obvious plot twists and predictable ending, they found Santiago to be a likeable character and enjoyed elements of the Mexican trying to make his way in English Premier League soccer.

I’m not sure how much money this film actually made, but it appears that there are two sequels in the works, one set in Spain and the other at the World Cup. It seems safe to say that Santiago Muñoz's career turns out to be a successful one.

The 40 Year Old Virgin

Often, our greatest enemies are the fears that we create in our own minds. The fear of getting into a relationship, falling in love, and being hurt can lead us to avoid the problem altogether by simply not getting into that relationship. In the age of the internet, we can have a reasonably fulfilling social life by chatting online with friends whom we've never met in real life, play games with them, have a beer with them, and avoid the emotional risk that we take every time we put our trust in someone in the real world, whether that trust be geared toward a friendship or a romantic attachment.

This fear is common for all of us, whether we are the extrovert at the party who is the first to get up and dance, or the introvert that sits in a corner sipping a soda and nervously engaging in small talk.

Whereas most romantic comedies go out of there way to make those people who quietly sit in the corner at parties feel nervous and inadequate about themselves, The 40 Year Old Virgin champions their cause. This time it is the extroverts who are squirming nervously in their seats as the movie progresses.

This is a movie, like Free Enterprise that came out a few years back, which champions the nerd. Unlike Free Enterprise, however, it doesn't feel that it has to lie to make people identify with the protagonist. If I may be so bold, it is probably the first time that I've seen a true nerd portrayed accurately in a movie.

Andy is our titular forty year old virgin. But he is not an unhappy man, wallowing in some sort of pathetic existence. In fact, as he tells us early in the movie his life is quite a fulfilling one, although it may be a little strange for the majority of the movie going public. He has an enviable collection of toy action figures, he plays all sorts of video games, and my personal favorite, enjoys painting metallic miniatures.

Nevertheless, the group of guys with whom he works, take it on as their mission to get him laid. It is at this point that the true comedy begins and we learn about the two main messages of the movie.

Andy is more than just a sexual virgin. His lack of luck in the bedroom, which really stems from a few embarrassing sexual incidents earlier in his life, has led him to become a social recluse. He doesn't really hang out with anybody other than the older couple upstairs, whom we only see interacting with him from their balcony. When he does start going out with the guys from work, they play a series of pranks on him. Sure, pranks seem horrible, but the truth of the matter is that in a guy's world it is these social pranks that build one's resistance to other embarrassing experiences in life. One gets the distinct impression that if Andy had had more experiences like this in High School, he wouldn't have let the two or three awkward sexual experiences we see on screen drive him into complete social reclusion.

The other point of the movie is that Andy's more sexually active buddies aren't any more capable of finding happiness than he is. One of his friends, David, is still trying to get over the girl he was in love with two years ago, a woman we find out who is so unstable herself that David is better off without her. His other friend, Jay, has a stable girlfriend but finds himself cheating on her to make up for his own lack of self-confidence. Meanwhile Seth is the guy who always talks big, but never really seems to score. Over the course of the film, Andy eventually learns that they really aren't any better off than he, and in fact, it is their friendship with Andy that helps the other guys fix their own lives.

Andy meets the love of his life early in the film. Trish, who runs an eBay store, has three mostly normal kids but whose life is as lonely and devoid of true romantic love as anybody else in the cast.

The scenes where Andy calls her up repeatedly, only to hang up the phone or pretend to be somebody else are classic, as is his discovery that it is really not that hard to meet a girl and have her interested in him.

The other important lesson that Andy learns in the film is that nobody really treats him like a pariah when they find out he is a virgin. In fact, one of his co-workers is relieved because it means that Andy is not a psychopathic killer. The other guys may give him a hard time, but they genuinely like and care about him and want him to be happy as he struggles with the fear of telling Trish that he is still a virgin entering into his fifth decade.

And like most of our fears, Andy learns his fears are more traumatic in his head than they are in real life.

Quick Notes About the Best Picture Nominees

by Ted Langlais

Like most other movie addicts, I’ve had a life-long love-hate relationship with the Academy Awards. I’m aware of their faults, that they often overlook the better films that have been produced over the years, and have a complete disregard for the beauty of independent film. Yet, each year, I find myself strangely drawn to their allure, once again immersed in the annual ritual of speculating about the winners, should-have-wons, and what-the-hell-were-they-thinkings.

I remember when I first became aware that the Oscars were fallible in their judgment of movie greatness. It was the mid-eighties. I was a Canadian High School student with nothing to do on a snowy Saturday night in April. So, I trudged through the snow to the local General Store and rented a couple of films, Platoon and The Mission. Both had been nominated for best picture, and Platoon had won. I figured that it was the making of a memorable movie night.

I watched The Mission first because I figured that Platoon had to be the better movie. After all, it did win the Oscar for Best Picture.

From the opening sequence of the Jesuit priest being nailed to the cross and sent over the falls, to the gorgeous harmonies of the choir that accompanied the final battle sequence, the movie held me spell bound. The story of two men sacrificing themselves for what they believed, and dying according to their own principles is one that has haunted me to this day.

Platoon paled in comparison. I’ve have never watched it a second time and really can’t remember much of the story.

That was my first lesson about the Academy Awards. It’s a lesson I’ve kept in mind every year since. Even though I do try to watch the Oscars, I don’t expect the film that I liked the best to really win and I certainly don’t expect the film I liked the best in any given year to even be nominated.

So, with that bias in mind, I give you my brief and humble opinions about the five films that were nominated this past year:

Finding Neverland

I’m not certain whether or not I like Johnny Depp’s new trend of playing the ‘regular’ guy. I really respect him as an actor and I’m happy that he can choose whatever scripts he wants these days. It’s nice to see him in a variety of roles but during Finding Neverland, I kept expecting him to reprise his Pirates of the Caribbean role and dress up as Captain Hook.

Kate, whom I used to refer to as the young Helena Bonham Carter but who is now the older Keira Knightly, delivers a wonderful performance and keeps her clothes on the entire time.

Finding Neverland is blatantly melodramatic in a good way, like Field of Dreams. Its central theme is that fantasy is necessary for any healthy life. My wife cried for the last half of the movie. But, although I’ll probably watch it again when it makes its way to HBO, it just isn’t memorable enough to earn a spot on my DVD shelf.

The Aviator

Better than The Gangs of New York (how much of a compliment is that?)

Leonardo’s best performance since teaming up with Johnny Depp in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Toward the end of the movie, I actually forgot that it was Leo I was watching and that’s never happened to me. Hell, it hasn’t even happened to me while watching a Tom Cruise movie.

I can’t believe that Cate Blanchett won the Oscar for her performance. It was basically a one note imitation of cardboard cut out of the real Katherine Hepburn.

The story itself is well filmed and filled with spectacular scenes and drama, but computer graphics imaging still can’t seem to get water to look right.

Sideways

My favourite film of the bunch, so of course it didn’t stand a chance in hell of winning the Oscar.

An intelligent guy film with some pretentious wine tasting lectures and references being the stories only major detriment. Now, if the main character was actually a beer aficionado touring microbreweries, this dialogue might have been believable. Nothing can change the fact that the whole wine thing is the most obvious plot device since Rosebud, however.

The conversations about writing, on the other hand, were realistic and humorous. I’ve had many similar chats with my own friends. I’ve also tried using drafts of novels to win the girl, but the fact that the main character is actually successful in his using “I’m a novelist so love me” modus operandi is pure fantasy.

Even though I thought this was a wonderful film, I still don’t think that I’ll slap down any more cash for it than I already have.

Ray

As much as Ray Charles deserves to be up there with other musicians whose lives have been turned into movies, Ray really doesn’t rise above the level of La Bamba. It was only Jamie Foxx’s performance that got this movie an Oscar nomination in the first place.
And even though, I have a great deal of respect for Jamie Foxx’s performance we all know he benefited from the role he was playing. When was the last time that an actor portraying a “real life” person or someone with a disability did not walk away with the trophy?

Million Dollar Baby

I finally saw this movie today. Is it just my weak imagination, or do other people still see young Clint from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly or Dirty Harry when they see him in a movie?

The truth is though, that when Eastwood gets behind the camera, he's brilliant. He's brilliant when he's producing, and his music is pretty good too.

Maybe it is just because I had to wait so long to see Million Dollar Baby but I thought it was a (may I use the word again ?) brilliant feature film.

The characters tell the story and the acting is convincing and moving. The camera work isn't flashy but many of the shots use shadow to their full effect, illuminating the actors faces and revealing how much expression can be communicated with a slightly furrowed eyebrow or simple curl of the mouth.

Hilary Swank showed why she has taken home two Oscars. I know she won for her performance during the last thirty minutes of the film but it was really her acting in the first forty-five minutes that won me over.

Thank God I didn't read anything about this movie before seeing it. The twists and turns of the story caught me off guard. Eastwood has done the same thing for the traditional Hollywood boxing film as Unforgiven did for the Western.

Hopefully, he'll do something similar with an aging cop movie in the near future.

I CANNOT GET ANY SLEEP UNTIL THE OSCARS BECAUSE MY MIND IS A MESS

The Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday February 27, 2005. After it is over, I look forward to some good sleep because I have flip-flopped in my mind so many times about 3 of the top categories that my brain is becoming mush. I do not recall a more difficult show to predict since I started doing this column back in the early 90’s. Aviator started strong, with Golden Globes and Producer’s guild wins, but the recent momentum has all been behind Million Dollar Baby, with Clint taking Best Director at both the Golden Globes and more importantly, the Director’s Guild. Factor in the sweeping epic rule vs. beloved academy darlings, and throw in a bit of ‘deserving for their body of work’ and you get a real bunch of dogfights here. When you watch the show, look for the supporting categories, which are given out first, to give you an indication of the night’s events. If Morgan Freeman wins and Cate Blanchett doesn’t, consider Million Dollar Baby to take the major awards and vice versa. After that, if Aviator starts to lose the tech categories, it should be a night for Million Dollar Baby.

As always, I have allocated numbers to the nominees to indicate their percentage chance of winning. I have also put them in order of my confidence. Feel free just to scan down to the ones you are only interested in. Again, remember folks, whoever the academy picks is only THEIR opinion of who is deserving and not reflective of what the whole world or certain individual’s think (There are only 5,000 academy members). So here goes:

Best Picture

48 Aviator

47 Million Dollar Baby

5 Sideways

Ray

Finding Neverland

My Pick: The Aviator

My Second Pick Million Dollar Baby

My Preference: The Aviator

This was one of my three flip-flops. The awards that usually predict the outcome were split: Producers Guild for Aviator and Director’s Guild for Million Dollar Baby. Baby has the momentum, but it’s hard to imagine a character piece winning, especially when you have all those cinematographers and film editors voting for their best picture. That being said, the Screen Actors Guild makes up the majority of the Academy and Clint is very beloved by the Academy…..you see my dilemma.

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Best Director - Motion Picture

51 Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby)

49 Martin Scorsese (Aviator)

Alexander Payne (Sideways)

Taylor Hackford (Ray)

Mike Leigh (Vera Drake)

My Pick: Clint Eastwood

My Second Pick Martin Scorsese

My Preference: Clint Eastwood

This is the second flip-flop category. Clint won the DGA, put his movie together with little financing, and the Oscars love him, but he has already won an Oscar for Unforgiven. Martin is one of the greatest directors of our time and has been nominated many times before and never won, and this movie is more of an epic that will get the techies to vote for him. Then again, I feel queasy thinking that this movie is the one he will win for best director. Put in the fact that Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty used e-mail and phone calls to push for the Roman Polanski upset 2 years ago and you get the idea that it’s up in the air for either.

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Best Performance by an Actor

100 Jamie Foxx (Ray)

Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby)

Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator)

Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda)

Johnny Depp (Finding Neverland)

My Pick: Jamie Foxx

My Second Pick Clint Eastwood

My Preference: Jamie Foxx

This is the only sure lock of the major categories. Jamie Foxx has won everything, he plays a famous musician who just died this year in a biopic, he made you forget he was an actor, and the speech at the Golden Globes made everyone want to hear something similar on Oscar night. If anyone can shockingly upset, it’s Clint Eastwood, who has never won in this category.

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Best Performance by an Actress

36 Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake

35 Hillary Swank (Million Dollar Baby)

24 Annette Bening (Being Julia)

5 Kate Winslet (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)

Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace)

My Pick: Imelda Staunton

My Second Pick Hilary Swank or Annette Bening

My Preference: Kate Winslet

My third and most difficult flip-flop of the year. I have an issue with Hilary Swank winning. It’s hard because I saw her performance, which blew me away, however, she won only 5 years ago and to win this twice would put her in the ranks of Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Jodie Foster, and Sally Field. The other thing to think about is that a voter would look at the ballot and think `Hey, I voted for Hilary 5 years ago and she won over Annette Bening, maybe this time I will give to Annette`. Do not forget that she is married to Warrren Beatty (see note on Best Director), which is why I think she has been very quiet. However, if some Swank voters go for Annette, then it is quite possible for Vera Drake actress Imelda Staunton to come up and shock everyone. Yeah I know…`Who is Imelda Staunton?` you ask. Well her movie was also nominated for Best Director and Screenplay so it has some notoriety. Still, Hilary’s momentum is pretty strong…………oh good grief! Ok so what do I care! It’s not like I have to predict everything right. I am going on a limb right now and pick at least one upset. I mean this is the perfect year for an upset, eh? I just want you all know how much I struggled with this one.

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Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

55 Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby)

40 Thomas Haden Church (Sideways)

15 Clive Owen (Closer)

Jamie Foxx (Collateral)

Alan Alda (The Aviator)

My Pick: Morgan Freeman

My Second Pick Thomas Haden Church

My Preference: Morgan Freeman

In this case, the body of Morgan Freeman’s work and the momentum of the movie will help him win it. If he doesn’t, then look for Aviator to start picking up awards.

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Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

45 Cate Blanchett (The Aviator)

40 Virginia Madsen (Sideways)

15 Natalie Portman (Closer)

Laura Linney (Kinsey)

Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda)

My Pick: Cate Blanchett

My Second Pick Virginia Madsen

My Preference: Cate Blanchett

If Cate doesn’t win, then I think the Aviator is truly going to be shafted. Madsen was wonderful, but I am not sure it is enough.

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Best Original Screenplay - Motion Picture

75 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

15 The Aviator

5 The Incredibles

5 Vera Drake

Hotel Rwanda

My Pick: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

My Second Pick The Aviator

My Preference: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Can’t imagine Kaufman not winning for Eternal Sunshine. That being said, the other three are all quite able to win. This category doesn’t always follow the fold.

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Best Adaptive Screenplay - Motion Picture

75 Sideways

20 Million Dollar Baby

5 The Motorcycle Diaries

Before Sunset

Finding Neverland

My Pick: Sideways

My Second Pick Million Dollar Baby

My Preference: Sideways

Sideways is the one to beat and it will likely be its only reward.

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Best Original Score

80 Finding Neverland, Jan A.P. Kaczmarek

15 The Passion of the Christ, John Debney

5 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, John Williams

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Thomas Newman

The Village, James Newton Howard

Finding Neverland is the only best picture nominee, but don’t count out John Williams’ who wins all the time.

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Best Original Song - Motion Picture

50 Accidentally In Love, Shrek 2

35 Believe, The Polar Express

15 Learn To Be Lonely, The Phantom of the Opera

Al Otro Lado Del Río, The Motorcycle Diaries

Look To Your Path, The Chorus

Basically, it comes down to which song every voter knows—the one from Shrek 2, or the one sung by Josh Groban in Polar Express, or the new Andrew Lloyd Webber song (and he has never won an Oscar)

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Best Animated Film

85 The Incredibles

15 Shrek 2

Shark Tale

Though both Incredibles and Shrek 2 were good, the Incredibles was an original concept and the first. Shrek already won this.

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Best Foreign Language Film

70 The Sea Inside, Spain

30 The Chorus, France

As It Is in Heaven, Sweden

Downfall, Germany

Yesterday, South Africa

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Best Art Direction

45 Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

40 The Aviator

15 A Very Long Engagement

Finding Neverland

The Phantom of the Opera

Although Aviator has the most nominations, Lemony Snicket won the Art Director`s guild. So if we feel that all the awards will not go to Aviator then go for the smaller films.

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Best Cinematography

40 House of Flying Daggers

35 The Aviator

25 A Very Long Engagement

The Passion of the Christ

The Phantom of the Opera

I am starting to think that maybe the Aviator won’t start sweeping and those individual films like House of Flying daggers and Very Long Engagement (which won its guild award) will take some.

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Best Costumes

70 The Aviator

30 Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

Finding Neverland

Ray

Troy

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Best Make-up

55 Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

45 The Passion of the Christ

The Sea Inside

This could be the only category where Passion of the Christ has a chance.

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Best Film Editing

55 Million Dollar Baby

45 The Aviator

Collateral

Finding Neverland

Ray

Aviator won the Editor`s guild but if Million Dollar Baby continues to dominate over Aviator, I am sure we all realize that Clint will take director and picture too.

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Best Sound Mixing

40 Ray

35 The Aviator

25 Spider-Man 2

The Incredibles

The Polar Express

Although Aviator took the guild, the music of Ray should help it win.

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Best Sound Editing

80 Spider-Man 2

20 The Incredibles

The Polar Express

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Best Visual Effects

100 Spider-Man 2

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I, Robot

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Best Documentary Feature

60 Born into Brothels

40 Super Size Me

The Story of the Weeping Camel

Tupac: Resurrection

Twist of Faith

Super Size Me is actually a well-known flick so its popularity may help it win.

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Best Documentary Short

70 Autism Is a World

20 Sister Rose’s Passion

10 The Children of Leningradsky

Hardwood

Mighty Times: The Children’s March

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Best Animated Short Film

40 Birthday Boy

40 Gopher Broke

20 Ryan

Lorenzo

Guard Dog

It would be great if the Canadian film Ryan wins.

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Best Live Action Short Film

60 Little Terrorist

30 7:35 in the Morning

10 Everything in This Country Must

Two Cars, One Night

Wasp

So let’s see the Tally of the top ones:

The Aviator -- 3

Million Dollar Baby-- 3

Ray-- 2

Spiderman-- 2

Lemony Snicket-- 2

Sideways-- 1

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- 1

Finding Neverland-- 1

Vera Drake-- 1

The Incredibles: -- 1

House of Flying Daggers-- 1

Shrek 2-- 1

by R. Bobby Umar

So there ya go:

The LAST thing I want to say is that usually one film is TOTALLY SHAFTED in either the nominations or the wins. This year, Sideways was shafted in the nominations and I would predict that Aviator could be the one that gets shafted in the wins. If this happens, expect Million Dollar to get more wins and some smaller films to surprise.

A Bridge of Clouds

By Yasseen

“Yasseen, Hurricane Ivan mauled Jamaica too. The old school, Munro, suffered...”

“Did you have to tell me! Another piece of our past destroyed!”

“Damaged, man. Damaged.”

(From a recent Instant Messenger conversation.)

********

I could imagine the clouds that built up before Ivan struck. I learnt to watch clouds as a child and became a cloud watcher. Nowadays, I watch televised cricket matches in the West Indies for the clouds that appear above the pavilion and the palm fronds.

Clouds have nationality. You can’t see West Indian clouds anywhere else and they have the power to take me back to my childhood: waking to the pre-breakfast chatter of crockery in my grandmother’s pantry; the taste of sal’fish’n’ackee; the earthy smell of Caribbean rain; and the pandemonium of colours over the sea at sunset.

I like visiting the past as it was, not what it has become. Damn Ivan!

I see my friend Vincent again, laughing fit to burst, near the Montego Bay Creek. I’m collecting scattered oranges, tomatoes and mangoes, returning them to a donkey’s hamper and apologising -- from a safe distance-- to a market lady sitting on the ground before an omelette of raw eggs and broken shells.

Vincent and I, six-year–olds, or thereabouts, had rollicked downhill on a couple of adult-size racing bicycles, from Jackson Town towards the Dome. Head down, streamlined, I hadn’t seen the donkey and my front wheel had rammed it between its back legs. Language! The donkey had had a lot to say. So had its mount when she landed in the street!

One day clouds gathered above our old, red brick house at Church Street, harbingers of a hurricane that blew down our giant guango tree. That was when I began cloud-watching.

Later, we moved to a farm in the hills near Brown’s Town. We lived with oil lamps, a radio powered by a car battery and a tank for rain water. Reading, horse riding and the wartime broadcasts of London Calling in the Empire Service were the entertainments. On holidays from Munro, my brother and I made charcoal for our antiquated stove. We churned the milk and made butter for the house. We also made mango chutney, though I couldn’t tell you the recipe today.

The farm, it seemed to me, could somehow generate huge clouds. It was like a fountain I saw on a student rag day in Birmingham. Puck had thrown a bucket of industrial detergent into it and bubbles as big as baby elephants sprang from it, one on top of the other. Foam and suds flowed down a nearby statue of Queen Victoria. On storm-threatening days, a similar show in cloud form developed above the farmhouse.

Eventually, the illustrations in the outsize edition of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” that lay on a table in our drawing-room came to life above us. Angels fought with fiery darts and set the coconut trees afire. Rain extinguished the flames. Celestial artillery roared. The house trembled.

I left Jamaica in 1947 and visited it in 1984, and then again in 1993. Our Montego Bay house had disappeared. My great uncle’s house, once next door to it, had become a police station. A bicycle hung incongruously from a veranda rail. Union Street had been widened, eating up the front garden of my grandmother’s first home. Her last home, opposite it, had vanished.

My great aunt’s Jackson Town cottage, once known in the family as “the doll’s house” for its air of prefabricated perfection, had become a slummy schoolhouse. Dust patches had replaced its lawn and croquet hoops. Children had stoned the painted carving of a man in a tamarind tree at the gate, crumbling his morning coat, pinstripe trousers, shoes and spats. A fraction of his face remained.

In contrast, a small, circular Georgian house, that I had known as The Round House Surgery, was a joy to see. Once my grandfather’s medical clinic and then that of my doctor parents, it had become a ritzy restaurant. That, I thought, suited it better.

Open cast bauxite mining, somebody said, had wrecked the farm. So, we stayed away, and on my last visit, the family took a bus trip from Montego Bay to Black River and YS Falls. On the way, we traversed the Pedro Plain. The Santa Cruz Mountains appeared and, perched on a pinnacle, was Munro College. The school’s football chant echoed in my head again:

“In arce sitam quis!
When we shoot,
We never miss…”

Beyond Savanna-la-Mar, signs announced Bluefields, but where was the plantation house that had inspired “A High Wind in Jamaica”? I had known it as a hotel. It had been visible from the road. And where was the ford? Our bus should have splashed through a stream, but the road was dry.

The stream had tinkled down the hillside behind the hotel and run through the hotel garden on to the road, across a beach and into the sea. My brother and I, on holiday there, had often waded downstream to the beach, putting a basket under the cascades, pulling it out to look at the wriggling crayfish we’d caught and then throwing them back into the stream.

Suddenly, the wisdom of Oscar Wilde’s aphorism on ignorance struck me. I swallowed my questions. “The foliage blocked your view of the hotel,” I told myself. “Drought has temporarily dried up the stream.” I didn’t want something else to regret.

Our oarsman at Black River, who told us the names of the river birds in English and Spanish, was a magician. He knew where the alligators hid and could summon them to the surface.

“We must go quickly if you’re to see the Falls,” our guide said when we returned to the bus. “There’s a storm at YS every day at four o’clock.”

A few frayed cotton buds sped across the sky. Nowhere in the world, I thought, are storms predictable to the hour!

I soon revised my thoughts. As we bounced towards the Falls, darkness overcame the afternoon. Sheet lightning flickered and a monsoon-force downpour of rain washed the bus. What better climax could we have had to our trip, I thought, as we watched forked lightning claw the river. The clouds had come up trumps.

I should have asked our guide how come there was a storm there at four o’clock every afternoon. I forgot to. But then, I had a fairy tale to take home with me. “Ignorance,” as Wilde said, “is a like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”

I guess I’ll be watching West Indian clouds on TV for some time yet... I live in Cairo with the call from the minaret, the sight of date palms under litmus skies, the silence of the desert and the smell of ‘molokheya’ soup...

Sorrel, that cooling Jamaican drink, by the way, is called ‘karkaday’ in Egypt. Somebody did ask if we drank it here...

I hope they restore the school to what it was.

Yasseen is the author of a coming-of-age story called 'Emigrating Home', which takes you from his birthplace, Jamaica, a British colony at the time, to his schools in Britain, and to the home he did not know, in Egypt. Born a dual British-Egyptian national, he was called into the armies of his two countries when they were in conflict. The experience spreadeagled him across a divide and Yasseen often felt akin to the mythical Jason and the Argonauts in his travels. You can visit Yasseen at www.emigratinghome.com.

Copyright © Yasseen 2004

Black Robe meets ABC's Lost

by Ted Langlais

A Review of Elle by Douglas Glover

Whether it has been intentional or not, the Governor-General’s award for literature has, with few exceptions, been awarded to the best Canadian novel of the year that says something about Canada, rather than the best literary achievement. For years, this meant buying the award winner meant getting some kind of history lesson, not necessarily an enjoyable read. Thankfully, however, the past few years have seen a trend toward fiction that is actually quite readable, enjoyable, and memorable.

Douglas Glover’s Elle, while still using Canadian history and folklore as its focus, provides a reasonably enjoyable romp. The language is clever, the narrator’s voice is wittily poetic, and Glover knows when to cut a scene before it becomes dull. At just over two hundred pages, Glover’s novel is the perfect length for his subject matter. Not so short that you feel you are getting ripped off if you buy it, but not so long that your eyes water with boredom before you are half way through.

The story deals with the legend of Marguerite de Roberval, a young French woman left stranded on an island in the St. Lawrence River in 1542. According to the novel, Marguerite is thrown off of a French vessel for having sexual relations with her lover and is, along with her servant, abandoned on an island somewhere near the mouth of the river.

She soon discovers that she is pregnant, but it is a pregnancy that is doomed from the beginning as the neither the woman nor the servant have the necessary survival skills to find nutrition and sustenance on this island. Marguerite soon finds herself alone, starving and delirious until a Native Canadian saves her with his indigenous knowledge of the territory. He helps her survive the winter, heals her spirit by having sex with her even if he does find her thoroughly ugly, and eventually leaves her to her own devices.

She escapes the island after the long winter, crazed with malnutrition and intellectual starvation. She is cared for first by an old woman and then by a fishing tribe before finding a means of travelling back to France.

As is typical with such works, Elle is a story of self-discovery, of finding one’s true self in the struggle for survival, learning to be one with the land and the surroundings; absorbing wisdom from the native culture.

Where Elle differs is in its language, voice and exploration of the feminine. Glover’s descriptions of traditional Native Canadian legends read more like Burroughs’s LSD induced hallucinations than respectfully dreary recounting of folklore. Still, his depiction of the landscape captures Canada’s mystical and deadly beauty.

And his heroine is decidedly contemporary.

In one of Virgina Woolf’s essays, she discusses how men never write about women except with regards to how the men relate to them. Glover does his best to contradict this and is almost successful. His protagonist emerges as a completely unique and interesting character in her own right. The novel reflects her mental as well as physical isolation from the masculine world. She is, in many ways, caught out of time as many intelligent women of her day most likely were.

Of course, I’m sure that my old Canadian Fiction professor up in Montreal would disagree with my interpretation of the character and claim that Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro are the only two living Canadian authors who could depict this woman in the way she should be portrayed. Nevertheless, Elle is a truly engaging and absorbing work.