Periodically, I will be posting some thoughts on teaching English as a Second Language in an urban setting.  This is one of those posts

One of my favourite things for the last few years has been podcasts.  They’re free, they’re entertaining, and they empower creative people in a way few other mediums do.  And as luck would have it, plenty of radio stations have been using the medium as a way to distribute their programming.  Now I can listen to Vinyl Cafe whenever I want!

So I know podcasts are a fantastic resource for keeping me entertained.  How are they as a resource in the ESL classroom?

Pro: Any topic you want, there’s probably a podcast for that

Podcasting requires little more than an internet connection and a computer capable of recording audio files, so it stands to reason that anyone sufficiently passionate about something can release a podcast.  Hooray!  Knowledge for everyone!  Except…

Con: Any topic you want, there’s probably a podcast for that

That low bar of “internet access and a microphone” also means it’s difficult to determine which are actually useful, well-done and worth actually using in the classroom.  Sure, you can make some safe assumptions, like CBC and NPR podcasts having (if nothing else) standard English usage and clear diction, but barring a great deal of research, there’s still a lot of vetting to do.

Pro: They’re downloadable audio files, not physical media or live broadcast

This is probably the most significant pro in my mind.  Gone are the days of hearing something on the radio that is lost to eternity unless you were taping it.  Scratched CD’s and worn out cassette tapes are a thing of the past.  As long as you have an iPod and some speakers, you’re good to go.  Right?

Con: They’re downloadable files.

As easy to use as iTunes and an iPod can be, they’re still not without their issues.  I’ve had a few times where an iPhone sync just didn’t take.  No matter if you’re willing to use your iPhone on the fly and download over 3G, but a smartphone with a healthy data plan is a new and fairly costly resource for any teacher.  A new textbook per month would cost less, and those never get corrupted or not work properly.  There’s obviously a lot of ways around this, but not all are simple or straightforward.  This con depends a lot on the patience of the teacher.

Pro: They can become a classroom activity unto themselves

Remember that bar of a microphone and internet access?  That remarkably low qualification to be a podcaster?  If you’re reading this, you qualify.  If all parties are willing, your class can have their own podcast.  Maybe as a long-term independent writing and speaking assignment, maybe as simply a means of sharing classroom techniques with the world, maybe something else entirely, but this is a possibility worth exploring.

Consider the possibility of a year-end project consisting of a class of 12 immigrants telling the story of how they came to Canada or discussing their story of settlement and integration.  These kinds of projects have always been possible, but creating one for an enormous audience is relatively new.

All in all, having used podcasts in the classroom, I’m convinced that they’re a worthwhile resource.  Not the resource, but a resource that, with a few hours of vetting, can be a reliable and convenient classroom resource for listening activities.  And as an activity itself, it opens up a lot of new possibilities.

It’s not that I don’t like irony.  In fact, my favourite t-shirt proclaims the exact opposite (although it’s my favourite because it’s remarkably comfortable after all these years).  And I defy you to name a more satisfying literary device than Dramatic Irony.  You can’t.  And you can still be as ironic as you wish.  I, however, am formally retiring from irony in 2012.

In an effort to have a more sincere and authentic 2012, I’ll no longer be devoting any more energy to liking things ironically.  Or “despite it’s flaws”.  Or “for the genre”.  If I like something, it will be unqualified.  Is this because life’s too short for joy to be constrained?  Because labels devalue what we hold dear?  No.  It’s because I like Queen, always have, and never with a trace of irony.  And because I’ve spent too much time living by my own made up rules.

Queen being, of course, the band that wrote a rock anthem with the complexity of classical music, and wrote it about riding bikes.  They also wrote the theme song to the remarkably silly Flash Gordon movie from 1980.  And the bombastic theme song to The Highlander (because there could be only one).  In general, Queen’s appeal has a lot to do with how earnestly and ambitiously they crafted songs with objectively ridiculous lyrics and subjects.

So logically, if I can love Queen without irony and without qualification, what can’t I love without irony?  Savage Garden’s I Want You?  Lady Gaga?  Meat Loaf?  That Justin Bieber song I secretly hum all the time?  They’re all on the table.  So is the Spider-Man cartoon from the 90′s and any and every Chris Farley movie.

Maybe life isn’t too short, and it’s actually too damn long.  Maybe I’ll live past 100 years and be able to devote an entire decade to re-writing Dickens in Klingon.  But I’m coming to realize that sincerity is in short supply, and as long as I’m on this planet, it’s not a bad idea to try and add a little more.

So that’s my 2012 resolution in a nutshell: live by the Queen Rule.

One of the stranger Literary Criticism topics that I came across in University is the Death of the Author. In a nutshell, it means the intentions and worldview of the author are meaningless. Only the interpretation of the reader qualifies.

It flies in the face of nearly everything I learned studying literature. Most lectures even started with a biography of the author. How can you understand art if you don’t understand the artist?

But you know what?

It makes sense.

Maybe it’s because the vast majority of literature that’s been dissected to death is written by people who have been dead for centuries. So it’s not like Dickens can organize a press conference to explain that Scrooge is or isn’t a metaphor for the Monarchy. The author is incapable of correcting his or her critics, so their opinion is moot.

And in the theatre world, the author may as well be dead. Contractually, all a playwright is guaranteed from a performance is that their setting and genders won’t be changed. And it’s not like there’s any way to make sure either way. Stephen Sondheim can’t personally see every high school production of West Side Story to make sure Maria still feels pretty.

But what really swayed my feelings on this is when, sometimes, the interpretation is greater than the intention ever could be. When Sir Mix-A-Lot sat down to write a song about how much he likes big butts, did he anticipate it becoming a rallying cry for women tired of an increasingly distorted cultural view of beauty? Probably not, but it became one all the same. And wedding dances are all the better for it.

“Baby Got Back” is the tip of the iceberg. How many people have been moved by a stand-up comic going for an easy laugh? By an episode of “Community”? By a song written for one of the “Transformers” movies?

Regardless of intent, we’re going to find our own meaning in what we read, listen to and watch one way or another. Even if we mean to or not. And for the most part, the good ones have been sticking around. We still love Shakespeare, even though we don’t actually know anything about his intentions or his perspectives. Or if he even existed. But that’s another matter, I guess.

So with that in mind, I say let the author die in peace. Because you other brothers can’t deny that great art always outlives the artist.

I’m pretty nerdy. I play old video games, love sci-fi and spy movies, and spend a good deal of time online. I’ve read more than half of Shakespeare’s plays and have a 67% winning percentage at Pub Quiz night. I will happily argue about why Batman is the best superhero, despite his lack of powers.

So when a friend of mine told me that I was an inspiration to him for being who I am and getting married all the same, I was somewhat taken aback. Not because of any humility or my tendency for self-deprecation, but simply because it never occurred to me that I was living in a way that was inspiring. Sure, I’ve taken steps to find a career that is about more than just a way to make money, and I’ve been successful at the Hamilton Fringe Festival, but I never thought I was already there.

I mulled it over for a while, and came to the following conclusions:

1. Nobody chooses to be a role model. It’s something that just happens. Obviously, this has implications for how I live. I can’t act like nobody’s watching or that nobody cares what I do after I’ve had someone tell me that they are and they do.

2. You’re probably already a role model to someone. I never considered that I might be until someone told me I was. Chances are, you don’t either. Which brings me to point number three…

3. It’d be nice if you told the people you look up to that you look up to them. If you haven’t already, anyway. It might inflate their ego, but it might convince them to keep on keeping on. Who knows how many people are on the verge of giving up on doing good because they can’t see the difference they make. I’m generally a fan of people who do good, and I think it’s in everyone’s best interest to encourage people to be better.

The last year has been one of many changes in my life, and the blog is changing with it.  While I won’t promise regular updates since my track record for that is pretty lousy, I hope that my adventures in the unintentional are worth reading about all the same.

Behind the scenes stories have always fascinated me. Even since before
my time in theatre, I’ve been asking myself some kind of variant of
“how did they do that?” ever since the day I saw Star Wars in 1997.
After a few shots at directing myself (I’ve made three short films and
one 90-minute student film in addition to directing four plays), I’m
more curious about how close to off the rails things can ever get
before disaster.  Lost in La Mancha provides that answer for me and,
painfully, Terry Gilliam.

When Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote fell apart before
completion, there were camcorders to capture it all. Lost in La Mancha
is the closest thing to a proper movie that will come from that
ill-fated shoot. It starts with unprepared actors and jets flying
overhead and it all goes downhill from there. And that’s after only
barely getting financing that left no room for error.

Seeing Gilliam’s dream torn away from him in both fascinating and
heartbreaking. The film never shows him at the depths of despair, but
remembering how long it’s been since he was last shown giggling out of
joy that something is going exactly right fills that in for us.  It’s
certainly a biased documentary, but how Gilliam could come out
anything but tragic given his circumstances is difficult to imagine.

Documentaries can be hard to rate effectively, but I was engrossed and
heartbroken for much of the film. Gilliam sometimes is shown as an
example of how not to Direct, but the scenes of the man beaming with
joy at seeing just the camcorder footage of his giants suggest
otherwise. Passion is what makes great art, after all.  Lost in La
Mancha isn’t great art, at least not in the same way as some of
Gilliam’s best work, but it is a stirring look at the insanity of
following one’s passion.

B+

Christopher Nolan seems to be a fascinated filmmaker.  Fascinating, too, but he absolutely has some key themes and ideas that he wants to explore in his films.  The most prominent, at least at this point in his career, seems to be order.  The notion that people can impose order on their world figures strongly in Memento, The Prestige and The Dark Knight as subtextual themes, but it’s essentially the text of Inception.  Perhaps not the result of applying order to chaos, but of applying the logic of design to the inherent illogical state of dreaming.

Inception is, fundamentally, a heist film with a strong emotional core.  The layers that Nolan adds are in many ways literal layers, and it’s to his credit as a writer that the film never becomes so obsessed with the gee-whiz novelty of it’s concept that it gets in the way of telling that story.  Yes, confusion can set in, but for a movie that takes place largely within the subconscious, it’s layered in about as straight-forward and logical a way as possible.

Does this make sense?  It seems like a paradox for a dream to be easily understood, navigated and even manipulated.  Yet these aren’t random subconscious dreams; they’re painstakingly designed.  By an architect, no less.

Still, even in a logically structured dream, the chaos of the subconscious can’t be controlled.  Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb appears to be intent on preventing that, much like Leonard in Memento or Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight, but it appears as though Nolan doesn’t think order can be imposed where it isn’t already present.

Story aside, however, Inception is engrossing and astounding.  The cinematography is absolutely beautiful, taking pleanty of time with it’s shots; when they’re composed with such detail and purpose, there’s no sense at all in quick-cut editing.  The action scenes are unlike anything seen since The Matrix, and the visual effects are state-of-the-art.  It’s difficult to really overstate how great Inception looks.  It was shot and edited with purpose, and holds your attention like few films can.

But all that aside, Inception does need to be more than just an intriguing story and spectacular visuals.  In science fiction, your concept is only as good as the characters who have to navigate it; at the end of the day, the audience needs a reason to give a shit about what happens.

Performances are, in general, solid.  There’s really no glaring errors in casting or performances, save some occasional overacting by Ken Watanabe and perhaps too much exposition required by Ellen Page.  But the core of the story, Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard, excels.  Both deliver stirring performances, and give the film the weight it needs.

So with all this working for it, what more can be said about Inception?  It’s a rare film; one that looks like it cost the $200 million that Nolan required to see his vision come to life.  It’s surprisingly ambitious, and surprisingly ambiguous.  There’s a lot for the audience to wrestle with, and it practically demands repeat viewings.

The Lookout – 2007 (Dir. Scott Frank)

The Lookout is an easy movie to really like, but not quite love. For one thing, it’s a really smart film; no, it’s not really breaking any ground in it’s story (it’s about a bank robbery in a small town), but how it tells the story is very sharp. It also boasts some great performances by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jeff Daniels. Having a solid script, nice visuals and great actors is one thing; but making them all elevate the material is another. And that’s where the intelligence of the film comes into play.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character is disabled. Gordon-Levitt’s character suffers from brain damage caused by a car accident in the years before the action of the film; he has amnesia. In the hands of a less tactful writer and director, this could be a recipe for disaster. In the hands of a less capable actor, too, this could come across as embarrassingly patronizing. Instead, it serves to make the film better. Gordon-Levitt’s performance is sympathetic, but never pathetic. The audience feels his frustration, but he’s never given a free ride because of his handicap. If anything, his disability makes the film’s antagonist (Watchmen‘s Matthew Goode) seem more cruel, rather than Gordon-Levitt more innocent.

The film also takes it’s time, and allows us to get to know the characters. Scenes run, if anything, a little too long, rather than a little too short. The film feels longer than it’s 99-minute runtime, but that’s an asset more than a burden. The camera isn’t afraid to linger on a shot. Bu it’s the strength of the acting, even smaller parts, that does the heavy lifting here. Gordon-Levitt, Daniels and Goode all turn in stellar performances. Deputy Ted doesn’t have much screen time, but Sergio Di Zio turns makes them work. Likewise, Greg Dunham’s brief performance as Bone is menacing without being over the top.

The Lookout, the first feature written and directed by Scott Frank, does wear it’s influences on it’s sleeve. The snowy small town setting and menacing henchman recall elements of Fargo, and the amnesia angle reminded me of Memento, but the film stands on it’s own merit. And frankly, if you’re going to borrow liberally from anyone, it may as well be Christopher Nolan and the Coen Brothers. Regardless, it’s a very strong film and a worthy entry in the canon of contemporary crime films.

B+

Originally printed in Mayday Magazine, March 2010

Before I review A Serious Man, I feel that I should disclose two important personal facts.  The first is that I’m a huge fan of the Coen brothers.  That’s not too extraordinary; it’s hard not to at least respect the Coens for the quality and originality of the bulk of their work. I’ve encountered few people who don’t love at least one of their films.  I’d certainly argue they’ve made no less than three modern classics (Fargo, The Big Lebowski and No Country for Old Men), and even if they haven’t, their reputation is, at least in my opinion, deserved.

The second is that I’m not Jewish and have had very little interactions with Jewish culture. And while seeing A Serious Man may not necessarily require a working knowledge of contemporary Jewish culture, it certainly helps if you do.

A Serious Man is a dark comedy about the existential crisis of Professor Larry Gopnik (he is played by Michael Stuhlbarg, a veteran stage actor making his first major onscreen appearance).  Larry’s wife wants to leave him.  His son has started smoking pot.  His daughter is apathetic towards him at best.  He’s facing a serious moral dilemma at work.  When he seeks religious guidance, he winds up with less comfort than he started with.  All in all, the early 1970′s are a pretty bad time to be Larry.

And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.  The film piles on misery after misery in what should be one of the best weeks of Larry’s life; his son is about to have his Bar Mitzvah and Larry appears to be in good position to gain tenure at his university.  From there, however, a number of mild inconveniences escalate and escalate.  Some of this might be Larry’s fault, but we’re never given quite enough information to know for sure.

Is a rebellious child the fault of a parent? Is divorce the fault of an emotionally absentee partner? A Serious Man doesn’t show enough for the viewer to move beyond basic assumptions. Then there are events where Larry could not possibly be at fault; these, too, add to his plight.  Larry just has a lot of terrible things happen to him with no particular explanation why.

This is a common theme in the Coen’s work, but it’s presented differently here.  In their most beloved film, The Big Lebowski, few pleasant things happen to The Dude; yet this never seems too apparent because The Dude and his friends are engaging and likeable characters and the film leans quite heavily on the ridiculous.

While objectively A Serious Man never really stretches plausibility, only a few characters seem truly amiable.  Larry, though certainly not a cruel man, is a far cry from the likeable everyman.  He has a few scenes where he’s a doormat to a frustrating degree.  Still, I found myself growing sympathetic toward his fruitless search and ever-growing list of questions without answers.

That said, I don’t think the film blindsides it’s audience with misery. When you know what sort of darkness to expect, it comes as less of a surprise.  I wasn’t taken aback by the degree of suffering Larry endured during the film. At the same time, I was taken aback by the overall tone of the film: A Serious Man never revels in Larry’s pain, it simply presents it.  While the Coen brothers have made films that make a few laughs at the expense of it’s characters, I don’t think A Serious Man is one of them.

Ultimately, the Coen brothers have constructed a well-made film. They know their craft, and their writing is generally very sharp and the film is technically very good; they know how to get great performances out of their actors and the film is well-shot and well edited.  In particular, the film boasts a very strong performance by Michael Stuhlbarg, who to my surprise actually did not earn a Best Actor nomination for his work.

The question with A Serious Man isn’t “is this good?”, but “is this worth seeing?”  That’s a vital distinction to make, and I’m actually not sure what side of the fence I fall on.  Philosophically, there’s a fair bit to grapple with.  The film’s central question is “why do bad things happen to good people?” and the film never really tries to answer the question.  Or rather, if they do, they give such vague responses as “it’s all about perspective” or “just because, and who are we to question it?”.

Perhaps the journey the viewer takes is meant to mirror Larry’s, but ultimately, it’s a film that’s easy to admire but hard to love.

B