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My Fourth Anniversary

My kids making a gingerbread house
It's hard to believe, but today is the fourth anniversary of the Unexpected Twists and Turns.(The link is to my very first post: Ice Cleats Anyone?) Not only have I written over 400 posts, but I have exceeded my expectations in terms of pageviews. I have EL James and Fifty Shades of Grey to thank for that. I guess I used the right keywords, title and embedded links for my review to rank high in the search engine results, because I certainly got a lot of hits and comments.

You may have also noticed that I did not write as often this year and that I reviewed a lot more books, show, films, etc. As some of you already know, I began blogging when my son was but a babe, and my daughter was in kindergarten. Blogging was a great way to connect with people while staying home with my kids. Today, my son is in kindergarten, and my daughter is a pre-teen in fifth grade. Needless to say, I feel a little more comfortable leaving them with a babysitter for a night on the town. This year, I also started writing for a group of talented people at Rover Arts. They are the ones responsible for sending me some great books as well as tickets to review shows here in Montreal. If you'd like to subscribe to The List, Rover's weekly listing of things to do in Montreal, click here.

Yesterday, on a trudge to pick up my daughter's friend.
Over the next year, I will continue to blog at about the same frequency, as we now have homework, chores, piano lessons, and then there will be swimming lessons in the spring. Yep! We're busy. The themes may change slightly, but you can be sure that there will be more on books and films, plus a few posts on my neighbourhood.

I'd like to thank you all for your support, especially my email subscribers who have been reading my posts since the very beginning. Cheers!

Here's a list of my most popular posts this year:
Review: 50 Shades of Grey
Success: Don't Be That Guy
Montreal: 200,000 People Demonstrate
The Year of the E-book: Fifty Shades of Grey and Oprah
The Return by Dany Laferrière
 Ru by Kim Thuy


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Mister Roger and Me by Marie-Renée Lavoie

Mister Roger and Me
Marie-Renée Lavoie
House of Anansi Press

For children, cartoon characters not only offer entertainment, but also provide a vision, however skewed, of the outside world. And although many might refuse to admit it, cartoon heroes often serve as early role models. This is the case in the endearing story of Mister Roger and Me, the translation of Marie-Renée Lavoie’s award-winning debut novel.

Set in the early 1980s, the story follows the life of Hélène through those seemingly endless pre-teen years. The eight-year-old decides she wants to be called Joe because she assumes that life as a boy is better. It isn’t because she is the second eldest of four daughters, but because Hélène is enthralled with the cartoon heroine Lady Oscar, a military captain in Maria-Antoinette’s palace guard who conceals her female identity behind a heavy coat laden with medals and military insignia. For Hélène, Lady Oscar epitomizes courage, strength and adventure.

Although our young protagonist tries to emulate Lady Oscar, her neighbourhood offers little in the way of romantic windswept settings. Her working class neighbourhood is populated with psychiatric outpatients roaming the streets, welfare recipients and her obese neighbours, the Simards. However, to Hélène, her surroundings are merely humble, not grim, and inspired by Lady Oscar, she strikes out to find an adventure in her tiny world. But instead of fighting for justice during the French Revolution like her heroine, Hélène lies about her age and says that she’s 10 to get herself a paper route, and when that isn’t enough, she takes on a second. At the same time, a new boarder moves into the Simards’ basement, a man by the name of Mr. Roger.

The new neighbour whiles away his day drinking beer in a worn-out armchair, and much to the chagrin of Hélène’s mother, Mister Roger swears like a sailor. But beneath his rough exterior lurks a kind heart, and the ailing senior dispenses wise advice to Hélène, in addition to serving as the neighbourhood source for home remedies. The senior and father of three grown children is a godsend who watches over Hélène and saves her from a fate that would have left lasting scars even on Lady Oscar.
The Original French

Lavoie has beautifully captured those bright shiny pre-teen years before the sordid side of human nature makes its unfortunate appearance. The brilliant use of Lady Oscar as a narrative device successfully reels the reader back to those tender years when performing an honourable deed was worth every last joule of energy. Another wise choice was the use of the first person narrative, limiting the reader to the world as seen through the eyes of a young girl. However, while the author has made some great choices, there are a number of passages with long-winded, heavy sentences that warranted a second read, interrupting the flow of the story.


Originally published under the title La Petite et le vieux in French, Mister Roger and Me was a risky undertaking, as many will immediately shy away from a story about a relationship between an old man and a young girl. But the odd pairing of characters works in this book; Hélène and Mr. Roger complement each other. The outgoing innocent child needs Mr. Roger’s guidance, while Hélène’s optimism offers Mr. Roger some hope in the final years of his life. Both funny and touching, Mister Roger and Me will remind readers of a time not long ago when we were far more trusting of our neighbours.

This review was originally posted in the Fall 2012 edition of mRb.




Other Reviews
Song of Roland by Michel Rabagliati
Mid-Life by Joe Ollmann
5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
Detropia by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Finding Dawn by Christine Welch
The Fruit Hunters by Yung Chang
Review of the Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder
The Day of the Crows directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint

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Review of The Song of Roland by Michel Rabagliati

The Song of Roland
Michel Rabagliati
Conundrum Press

We’ve waited three long years for the English translation of Michel Rabagliati’s internationally acclaimed Paul à Québec, his sixth album in this semi-autobiographical series. As in Rabagliati’s previous stories, the author addresses a milestone in Paul’s life.

Our protagonist is your average middle-class nice guy, a husband to Lucie, and a father to Rose. In short, Paul is someone readers can readily identify with. Paul, now almost 40, moves with his family from their urban apartment to a modest home, just as he is hitting his stride in his career as a graphic artist. In other words, life is good. But on a long holiday weekend with Lucie’s parents and extended family, Paul inadvertently discovers that his father-in-law Roland is sick.

While The Song of Roland is about Roland’s life and legacy, this intergenerational portrait is also about family, love, and coping. Of course, the story will bring many readers to tears, but Rabagliati expertly negotiates the theme of death by adding moving family memories and generous doses of humour to keep things light and the narrative moving.

The old-school federalist and quintessential self-made man, Roland is also a likeable character. Born into poverty, he came of age in the prosperous post-war era and achieved relative wealth through hard work and determination, back in the day when success did not require a higher degree. His political views differ from those of his offspring, who came of age at the height of Quebec nationalism. But for all his hard work in life, Roland’s new rank among the dying is unbearable for the former executive, and true to the Kübler-Ross model, Roland proves to be a stubborn, difficult patient for hospice staff at the beginning of his three-month stay.

Rabagliati’s treatment of time in The Song of Roland is nothing short of masterful. As anyone who has lost someone can attest, the final months and days are excruciatingly long, and time indeed moves very slowly. To illustrate this, the author decelerated time segments by increasing his number of frames. In his beautiful broad ink brushstrokes, Rabagliati shows us Paul’s final drive to bid farewell to his father-in-law in no less than 22 frames, adding highly realistic yet extremely banal detail, such as Paul fastening his seatbelt, turning right onto Sauvé East, taking the Louis-H.-Lafontaine tunnel, and even passing by IKEA. The author successfully draws out the sequence while maintaining the reader’s interest.
The Original French Cover

In terms of graphic elements, the most stunning is Lucie’s nightmare, foreshadowing her father’s death. Rabagliati contrasts a sequence of luminous open spaces in which an adolescent Lucie and her father are clowning around on a summer’s day with that of Lucie walking alone in a dark dense forest with short teeth-like branches. Amid the darkness, Lucie comes across a small structure awash in light with a tiny Virgin Mary statue on the forest floor and then comes face to face with the shadowy grim reaper wielding a shot gun. Another poignant visual is the floral pattern created by Roland’s final injection of morphine.

The Song of Roland has been hailed as Rabagliati’s mid-career masterpiece and with good reason. This is his best yet. But the dramatic change in title for the English version will certainly raise some eyebrows. Why the sudden shift in emphasis from Paul to Roland? Could it be the new publisher? Anyway, diehard Paul fans who have patiently waited for the translation will not be disappointed. Once again Rabagliati, the storyteller, gives us another highly realistic and riveting chapter in Paul`s life, while Rabagliati, the artist and craftsman, skilfully brings his readers close enough to the action to make them feel personally involved in the story.



This review was first published in the summer 2012 edition of the Montreal Review of Books.



Other Reviews
Mid-Life by Joe Ollmann
5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
Detropia by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Finding Dawn by Christine Welch
The Fruit Hunters by Yung Chang
Review of the Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder
The Day of the Crows directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint


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5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi

Adeeb (centre) and other demonstrators
Winner of the People's Choice Award at the RIDM, 5 Broken Cameras is an intimate look at the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as seen through the lens of Emad Burnat, a Palestinian farmer and amateur videographer living in Bil'in, West Bank. In his attempt to create a visual record of the border conflict that unfolds over six years, he has a series of five cameras destroyed. This is just one narrative thread that runs through this autobiograpical film, brilliantly edited by Israeli video activist Guy Davidi.

In 2005, Burnat purchases his first camera to film the birth of his fourth son Gibreel. This event  coincides with the arrival of Israeli surveyors who are laying the groundwork for a barrier through the village's olive groves. The barrier, a combination of barbed wire fence, a concrete wall and watchtowers, is ostensibly to protect the expanding Israeli settlements from snipers and suicide bombers. But the barrier also appropriates the Palestinian olive groves, the villagers' means of subsistence. Local Palestinians begin peaceful weekly protests, often resulting in violent clashes with Israeli soldiers. As can be expected, the conflict intensifies, the army closes in and the resistance movement swells to include Israeli and foreign sympathizers, all of which Burnat doggedly captures on film.

But 5 Broken Cameras also chronicles many personal events that run parallel to the struggle, taking the edge off the escalating violence and giving this conflict a much-needed human element. Burnat's friends, Adeeb and Basseem, the de facto resistance leaders, are key figures in the story. In addition to risking bullets in their verbal confrontations with Israeli soldiers, Adeeb is shot in the leg, while Basseem, the gentle giant, eventually meets his fate with a gas grenade. Burnat also films multiple arrests. The most poignant was his brother being apprehended by police, while both his mother and father tried in vain to stop the police vehicle.

Another narrative thread involves Burnat's son Gibreel. He grows from a joyful toddler whose first words are "cartridge" and "army," to a child with hardened eyes learning about heroes. Burnat, himself, also undergoes a few changes in the course of the film. His hair greys, he gains weight, and at the end of the film, he is involved in a near tragic accident that is unrelated to the conflict. Ironically, his life is saved at an Israeli hospital, and the Palestinian Authority refuses to pay him any compensation.

There are a few scenes, however, that appear staged for the sake of creating a stronger family narrative. The first scene that comes to mind is Burnat's wife putting Gibreel to bed and singing him a lullaby, and the second involves Burnat's wife telling him that his filming is jeopardizing their lives. These scenes may well have happened, but they appear to have been filmed after the fact. In addition, not all the footage used was Burnat's, as it was explicitly stated in the credits. Footage was also taken from Davidi's work and that of another unnamed cameraman.

In spite of this, Davidi's editing is first-rate. In an interview with Box Office, we learn that he had to go through over 1,000 hours of footage, and then do the final edit with Véronique Lagoarde to create this 90-minute film. The challenge, he says, was "to create a balance between the violence and the nice moments, the delicate moments." And I must add that without these delicate moments, 5 Broken Cameras would have come across as just more horrifying coverage of the conflict in the Middle East, and I would have left after 10 minutes.

In the end, 5 Broken Cameras is a gripping tale that gives us a much more nuanced story of the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unsurprisingly, the film has won awards at both Sundance and the IDFA, the world's largest documentary film festival.

This review has been cross-posted at Rover Arts

Other reviews
Detropia by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Finding Dawn by Christine Welch
The Fruit Hunters by Yung Chang
Review of the Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder
The Day of the Crows directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint
M60: Faux Pas


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Detropia by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady

Artists moving into Detroit
Detropia
Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady

Director Heidi Ewing grew up four miles from Detroit. After each visit home, she would invariably find herself telling friends in New York just how bad things were in the Motor City. Then she and fellow director Rachel Grady made a trailer for a film about the city. "Turned out there were other people also interested in Detroit," Ewing told the Huffington Post. The award-winning directors of Jesus Camp and The Boys of Baraka quickly received funding from PBS and the Ford Foundation. In October 2009, they started filming the highly acclaimed Detropia, which was presented at the 14th annual Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal.

The demise of Detroit is old news. We've been hearing about it for decades. In fact, a friend familiar with the area recently said that the purpose of building the Renaissance Center (RenCen) was to revitalize the downtown--that was in 1976. Even so, the last decade of globalization and outsourcing has decimated Detroit, and the film makes it abundantly clear that the extent of the devastation has to be seen to be believed. The Motor City reportedly has 100,000 abandoned homes and 25% of its population has left in the past decade. Detropia is intended to be a wake-up call to the world of what can happen to our cities if we continue to make decisions for purely economic reasons.

Ewing and Grady take us to the streets, showing us the city through the eyes of a handful of tough Detroiters who are unwilling to give up on their city. The cinematography is nothing short of stunning. The dilapidated homes, derelict hotels and rundown movie theatres are in stark contrast to the vintage footage of Detroit in its heyday, when it was the world's car capital and home to a burgeoning middle class. A haunting musical score is intercut with scenes from Detroit's Opera, which clings to life from support from the Big Three automakers.

The scenario may sound grim, and it is. Through local UAW President George McGregor, we see the status of what remains of the automotive industry. He chairs a meeting where management "offers" workers a sizeable cut to their hourly wages. There's also retired school teacher Tommy Stephens who runs the only blues bar left in East Detroit. He keeps the money-losing operation open with the hope that the plant up the road will soon be bustling once the electric car is perfected. The two represent the doomed hope of many North Americans--that manufacturing jobs will soon return to this side of the world.

But Detropia also offers hope. The film follows twenty-something Crystal Starr, a video blogger and urban adventurer when she isn't working in a café. Starr films herself breaking into abandoned buildings and houses, and imagines for her viewers what life was like when the city "was bangin." Visiting the ruins of cities like Detroit, known as ruin porn in Tumblr culture, has begun to draw a new kind of tourist to the city, not to mention scores of artists who are attracted to Detroit's low-cost of living and dirt-cheap real estate. I must admit that my initial interest in Detropia stemmed from seeing "the Ruins of Detroit," a brilliant photo essay by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

Ewing and Grady have given us a powerful snapshot of Detroit at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, with all of its crumbling architecture and infrastructure. The film also provides a much needed picture of the human element, the Detroiters who refuse to leave, something that no statistic, headline or "expert" can deliver.

Detropia serves up some great food for thought about globalization, our shrinking middle class, and ultimately, the future of our cities.

This review has been cross-posted at Rover Arts.

Detropia is showing at Cinéma du Parc from November 24 to November 29.

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The Fruit Hunters by Yung Chang
Review of the Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder
The Day of the Crows directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint
M60: Faux Pas

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The Fruit Hunters by Yung Chang

The Fruit Hunters
Directed by Yung Chang

Noris Ledesma, Member of the Rare Fruit Council Int'l
A gray November day calls for an adventure! So why not follow passionate fruit hunters Noris Ledesma and Richard Campbell on their quest to find a “wani” mango in Bali and rescue a rare durian from the evil clutches of encroaching industrialists in the jungles of Borneo. Their noble mission—to obtain plant grafts to preserve the species for cultivation on the other side of the world. Yet, the dynamic duo’s obsession with rare fruit is by no means unique, as moviegoers discovered at the world première of The Fruit Hunters presented at the 14th annual Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal. Among the ranks of fruit fanatics, the film features a driven fruit scientist who works tirelessly to create a banana resistant to a deadly fungus threatening the world’s crop, a fruit detective who studies paintings from the renaissance era to rediscover forgotten fruit and a well-known actor and fruit activist who spearheads a campaign to start a community orchard on coveted property in the Hollywood Hills.

Indigenous Guide in Borneo
Based on Adam Gollner’s best-selling book, The Fruit Hunters is a visually stunning, fast-paced Indiana Jones-style documentary that takes us back in history and around the globe, investigating our love affair with fruit. Although actor Bill Pullman adds some celebrity fire power to the film, there is no question that the star of the show is none other than the fruit itself, in all its myriad forms. From the very first scene, the object of  affection is cast in a sensual and delectable light with a series of close-ups, enhancing the colour, texture and fullness of its star performers. A good thing the première was followed by a fruit-tasting event! And what better way to further enhance the natural beauty of fruit than by quickly switching to images of our mass-produced supermarket variety—the plain jane and insipid-tasting cousin of the real thing.

The Fruit Hunters takes a step away from the documentary in its strictest sense, using humourous re-enactments, highly detailed miniatures and a sprightly musical score. But these aspects add to the film’s playfulness and will remind many viewers of childhoods when both fruit and dreams of adventure were welcome distractions.

The film incorporates plenty of high stakes and irresistible hooks to keep the adventure rolling. Yet, it leaves viewers hanging as to the fate of Pullman’s Hollywood Orchard and whether or not Ledesma and Campbell’s white mango grafts bore fruit. Something tells me there might be a sequel, and I’ll be the first in line.

The Fruit Hunters will be opening on November 23, 2012 in Montreal and Toronto and on
November 30, 2012 in Vancouver.

Cross-posted at Rover Arts.

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The Goodtime Girl by Tess Fragoulis
Cross-country running for kids
LACMA: Mom's Need Fun Too
Downtown Los Angeles With The Kids

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Review of The Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder


House of Anansi

Recently short-listed for this year’s Governor General’sAward for literature, The Juliet Stories is the most recent work by Carrie Snyder. This novel-in-stories spans the life of Juliet from the tender age of 10 to adulthood. The eldest of three children, Juliet is the daughter of naive left-wing parents who uproot their family from Indiana and go to Nicaragua to help the Sandinistas fight the Reagan-backed Contras in the early 1980s. The well-intentioned father, however, is much more interested in fighting alongside the Sandinistas in el campo than helping his wife and young family get acclimatized to the new language and culture. But Juliet’s father is not the only one with his focus elsewhere. Although her mother, Gloria, is busy with her family and chasing down a toddler, it appears that she would rather be strumming her guitar and showing off her beautiful singing voice at adult parties than being a mom. Gloria is quick to pass on some of her parenting responsibilities to the eldest Juliet, something that the daughter resents.


The three children slowly adjust to their new life in Nicaragua, but Juliet is always an outsider at school, or the girl who has the unladylike habit of sweating and throwing like a boy in gym class. There is a constant stream of Roots for Justice volunteers arriving from the United States to continue the struggle, and her father gets a little too involved with a few. The family endures some harrowing experiences which include being stopped by a group of armed men in the hills and having their car stolen. This is around the time that the family discovers that Juliet’s brother Keith has cancer. The father stays behind to fight for the cause, while the rest of the family goes to live with the paternal grandmother in southwestern Ontario, where the brother undergoes treatment. Juliet is again an outcast at her new school, as she comes to terms with her brother’s illness and the fact that he is the exclusive focus of her mother’s attention. In the years that follow, the family disintegrates, and the parents move on to new partners.

Carrie Snyder has beautifully captured what many North Americans feel while living abroad as ex-pats, negotiating the invisible cultural lines only to find that in spite of their best intentions, integration and acceptance are part of a long complicated process. The entire family is marked by their experience in the Central American country, and it is where Gloria chooses to remarry, an event that Juliet finds exceedingly awkward. Throughout the book, Snyder gives an accurate depiction of the complexity and often contradictory emotions of mother-daughter relationships, possibly the book’s strongest point. When Gloria says that she cannot sing at her own wedding ceremony, Juliet does not buy the statement. “Parse the words, are any of them truthful, or would each sentence make better sense read in a mirror? Gloria is not a nervous woman; she has an icy reserve, a chill that permits her freedom to pursue, to leave, to choose at will, with control. She thrives on performance.” Yet, later at the reception when Gloria actually does sing and play her guitar, Juliet “experiences a shot behind the eyes, a burst of pride at her mother’s unexpected accomplishments.”

Fortunately, Juliet does not heap all her anger and blame onto her mother. The daughter is able to forgive her mother’s lack of attention when she discovers that she is pregnant after a one-night stand. Juliet learns from her aunt that she, too, was initially an unwanted pregnancy. Her father is more the target of Juliet’s wrath. After his death, the adult daughter wants to torch the farmhouse, the last place the entire family lived together. 

Carry Snyder is someone we’re bound to hear more of in the future. She is a writer's writer. Her razor-sharp prose is insightful and rich throughout, but the stories set in Nicaragua are by far the best. This is the perfect book for anyone who has lived or traveled in Latin America or who is simply curious about what it was like to have revolutionary parents in the early 1980s. 

This review was cross-posted at Rover Arts.

Other reviews:
The Goodtime Girl by Tess Fragoulis
One Good Hustle by Billie Livingston (Long-listed for the $50,000 Giller Prize)
Ru by Kim Thuy (Short-listed for the $50,000 Giller Prize)
Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien
Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter by Carmen Aguirre
The Return by Dany Laferrière
Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell 
The Girl Without Anyone by Kelli Deeth

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The Day of the Crows directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint

What better way to spend a rainy afternoon with the kids than seeing The Day of the Crows, an animated feature directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint.  Presented as part of the 41st edition of the Festival du cinéma du nouveau monde at the Théâtre Outremont, the much anticipated film, a France-Canada-Belgium-Luxembourg co-production, is based on the internationally acclaimed book Le Jour des corneilles by Quebec writer Jean-Francois Beauchemin. In addition to using the voices of actor Jean Reno and late Nouvelle Vague legend Claude Chabrol, the film was drawn almost entirely by hand, instead of the usual computer-generated images. As 24 images are required for just one second of animation, making a feature-length film is no small feat.

In The Day of the Crows, the central character is a young boy called simply “Son.” After the mother dies in childbirth in the wild, the infuriated father discards his infant son, but then reluctantly takes him back, raising him alone in the woods. Son, however, still sees his mother as a half -human half-fawn spirit. She and other anthropomorphized forest creatures are his only companions, besides his decidedly strange father. When Son is old enough to venture to the forest’s edge, he discovers a new world. His father warns him of the dangers of civilization, but when the elder falls ill, Son seeks help in the village where his father is eventually given medical treatment. This is where we learn of the father’s tragic past, and the grudge that some of the villagers still harbour against him. While the father recovers, Son stays with the doctor’s family, discovers love and learns the ways of the civilized world from Manon, the doctor’s daughter. Son eventually returns with his father to the forest, but his stay in the village has prepared him for his future survival.

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The Day of the Crows incorporates some beautiful painting and finely detailed characters, but Son, intended to be simple and devoid of any sophistication, is basic to the point of being bland, with few traits to make him endearing to young viewers. Artistically, the film was stunning with strong influences from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, but there were some technical problems that might be the result of a poor film transfer. The colours were oversaturated, and there were details out of focus throughout the film. But probably the biggest problem was its length. In spite of all of its artistic merits, the film could have easily been edited by at least 20 minutes.

Had Day of the Crows been released 10 years ago, it would have been wildly popular. But with stiff competition from Pixar, Studio Ghibli, Dreamworks and Disney, and the technical innovations of the last decade, young viewers (and their parents) now expect much more than just beautiful artwork and music. They want to be dazzled and entertained from beginning to end, which Day of the Crows fails to do. However, for the purists or those curious to see what hand-drawn animation looks like, this is an enjoyable film.

This has been cross-posted at Rover Arts.

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Cross-Country Running for Kids

Départ: On Your Marks
I've been trying to get my children to play outside more. But it isn't easy when you live in a city. Like most children, my kids would rather watch TV or play on computers, and I can see why. Kids don't play in front of their houses (even in Villeray where there are wide sidewalks) or in the back allies the way they used to. My kids enjoy going to the park or swimming when I take them. They're just not in the habit of going outside on their own. I've made it a rule that they can watch TV on Saturday mornings until 10:00 am, but  then they have to go outside and play in our small backyard, our car-free back alley or in front of our house on the sidewalk. Let's just say I've encountered some resistance.

So when my daughter said that she wanted to run cross-country this year I was enthusiastic. I bought her some leggings and special shoes to try to encourage her, and she and I started going for 5-K walks on the weekends. I also decided to take a personal day off work to see her run in the 42nd RSEQ Championship at Jean-Drapeau Park.

October 11 was an exciting, crisp day, and the sun was shining amidst the many colourful leaves. Running next to the St. Lawrence River brought down the temperature a few degrees, but the dark blue waves made the backdrop all the more picturesque. I have never attended a cross-country meet this big before: some 11,223 kids from elementary schools all over the city took part, and each race had about 300 participants. It was even difficult for me to make my way through the crowd to take pictures.

Grade 5 Girls at Orange Starting Line
My daughter had been selected for the "elite" grade 5 group. I had some reservations about this. After all, this was her first cross-country race, but I kept my thoughts to myself. We stood at the crest of the last hill near the end of the course and watched races for most of the day. I sensed my daughter had high hopes about how she would finish and wanted to prepare her for some possible disappointment.

I pointed out runners throughout the day to her to show her their different qualities. The top third of the field were all good, experienced runners who still had plenty of speed at the end of the race, and then the second third of participants who were in fairly good shape, but had less energy at the end. Then I showed her the last third who looked very tired, were overweight or were walking. I also showed her some "girls" in the other grade 5 races who were at least a head taller than my daughter and who already looked like young women. I emphasized the importance of finishing the race and explained that every race was different and that something could be learned from each one.

The race is on.
I was at the starting line when the pistol was fired to start my daughter's race. It began a few minutes after the last group of grade 5 girls had gone. The runners in the elite group were so fast that they actually caught up to the other grade 5 girls and ran past them. Of the six girls running in the elite group from my daughter's school, my daughter came in third. Well, she was disappointed as I expected. But after I reminded her that she had had enough energy to pass five girls at the end of the race, and that she had passed some other grade 5 girls in the race that had started before hers, she felt better.

When I asked her if she had enjoyed the run, she said, "How could I? Everyone was running past me. It was terrible." I turned my face away to smile. "That's what cross-country is all about," I  said. "You didn't expect to stay ahead of 299 girls in the elite group did you?" Then she smiled and said, "I guess not."

This morning she looked tired, but she told me that she wanted to start training for next year. She said that it wasn't enough to train in gym class at school. She had to train at home too.

I hope this will translate into her prying herself away from the computer and going outside more often. I really enjoyed this day at Jean-Drapeau Park. There's something very inspiring about kids showing enthusiasm about physical activity.

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Review of Wild by Cheryl Strayed

It has taken me some time to return to Wild by Cheryl Strayed, the first book to be featured as part of Oprah's Book Club 2.0. I bought the e-book version because I wanted to try out the highlight feature, share the parts I liked on Twitter with my e-reader, and see what passages the talk show Queen and all the other readers enjoyed. I also wanted to know if any of these aspects added anything to the reading experience, and if it was any threat to the traditional in-person book club.

Wild is the true story of  Cheryl Strayed who at age 26 hikes the Pacific Crest Trail alone. Yes, alone. She and her 50-lb monster backpack trek 1,000 miles up the Pacific Coast, as Strayed comes to terms with some major life issues.

The middle child of a single mother, Cheryl and her siblings are abandoned by their temperamental father. Although he leaves his young family in financial dire straits, the mother no longer has to bear the brunt of his anger. The single parent family moves around a lot, forever in a quest for cheaper rent, but the mother does her best to create a stable family environment. Mom eventually meets a nice man who is a suitable stand-in for a father, but the shortage of funds is a recurring issue. Strayed looks for stability early in life and marries at just 19. She then has the security to move on to college, but can't control her wandering eye. Then her mother is unexpectedly diagnosed with lung cancer, just as Strayed is in the final semester of her senior year. Doctors at the Mayo clinic give her a year to live, but her mother dies much sooner.

My tweet w/ link to Kindle promo page sent from my Kindle Touch.
It is the death of Cheryl's mother that undermines her already shaky existence. After her mother's demise, her stepfather quickly moves on to a new partner, while her siblings scatter. In addition to her grief and zero family support, her marriage falls apart, and she drops out of college. Her downward spiral leads her to a college-educated bad boy who introduces her to hard drugs, which ease her pain. But after a harrowing experience with a drug addict, she decides that this is not what she wants to become. Her challenging trek alone on the Pacific Crest Trail is her own attempt to come to terms with her past and turn her life around.

A passage I commented on in my tweet on the Kindle promo page.









My feelings towards Wild changed dramatically from the first to second read. After perusing all the rave reviews, I was expecting something more, a by-product of excessive hype. I found the tiny stylistic errors annoying, and I loathed the repeated reference to Snapple. I made a snippy reference to that effect in a Twitter update (which obviously never made it to the book's promotional page). I don't mind trade names of long-disappeared products that offer a cultural reference, but I loathe product placement. Other than these minor points, it was a good read, but one you definitely have to be in the mood for. Strayed can take you to some dark places and make you squirm. I found her description of the appeal of hard drugs particularly chilling.

I read Wild for the second time while I was on holiday in California. When I saw the mountains she had actually hiked, I had a better appreciation of the feat she had actually accomplished. I also felt the extreme vulnerability of this first-person narrative the second time through. Strayed brilliantly captures what it is like to grow up in a financially precarious home and offers some keen insight into dealing with loss. But more than anything, this narrative reflects the reality of hundreds of thousands of young women who are raised by struggling, well-intentioned single mothers. Readers, both male and female, will readily identify with Strayed, but some may find the rawness of Wild hard to stomach at times.

And according to what I saw posted on Twitter, most people found the book inspirational too. Did I find that their comments enhanced the reading of the book? Not really. Obviously, there isn't the same degree of connection as with members of an in-person book club. No real surprise there. Oprah's highlighted comments also meant much more in the second reading. I found them slightly distracting the first time through. But I do like the highlight feature and the tally of how many people actually liked a particular passage. The highlighter also serves as a great note-taking device for writing reviews, and I think that all bibliophiles enjoy sharing their favourite passages on Twitter. I know that I do.

Book Club 2.0: Can It Replace the In-Person Book Club?

Not for now, but I think that we can expect to see plenty of improvements and changes to the format, which is still in its infancy. One thing is for sure: the e-reader is one powerful promotional tool that has readers promoting and selling books for free. As I said in my previous post, the e-book/e-reader combo is a major boon for the publishing industry.

Other great books I've reviewed
The Goodtime Girl by Tess Fragoulis
One Good Hustle by Billie Livingston (Recently long-listed for the $50,000 Giller Prize)
Ru by Kim Thuy (Also recently long-listed for the $50,000 Giller Prize)
Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien
Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter by Carmen Aguirre
The Return by Dany Laferrière
Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell 
The Girl Without Anyone by Kelli Deeth

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