This review contains SPOILERS.
Your 2015-2016 Toronto Raptors
Putting aside any disappointments we may feel about those last two games, it must be acknowledged that, by nearly any standard, this was the Greatest Team in Franchise History; the most regular season wins, the most home wins, the most road wins, the most playoff wins… I may have had my expectations raised too high …
Sonatas and Poems (2015) by Stephen Hough
This collection features two of Scriabin’s piano sonatas, and two of his “poems,” plus Janacek’s only piano sonata and the first book of On an Overgrown Path.
Big Boys Gone Bananas (2011, Fredrick Gertten)
Regardless of what you think of Fredrick Gertten’s Bananas!* – a film I was skeptical of in part because of the film itself and, likely, in part, because of Dole’s campaign of defamation against Mr. Gertten – I doubt you believe that it should be censored (especially if you’ve never seen it). I have seen …
Behind Enemy Lines (2001, John Moore)
A while ago I read something (perhaps at AV Club) that said this movie was underrated. I decided to “give it another chance,” wrongly thinking I had seen it already.
London Spy (2015)
The problem with the vast majority of conspiracy movies and TV shows is the reveal. It seems to be a pretty easy and common thing to create mystery, especially mystery involving secret plots. It’s another thing altogether, apparently, to create a satisfactory resolution to a mystery, especially a mystery where “the powers the be” are …
Thomas Paine (2006) by Craig Nelson
I have only ever read The Rights of Man many years ago. I loved Paine’s wit – there are many classic one-liners, including my favourite anti-monarchist barb of all time: “a hereditary monarch makes as much sense as a hereditary poet laureate” – but found his philosophy superficial, probably because I had just left grad …
Bhutto (2010, Duane Baughman, Johnny O’Hara)
One of the defining characteristics of human beings that is that we are flawed, imperfect creatures. All the “Great Men” of history were actually just human beings; sometimes they did things we might view as great, but they had their problems. There isn’t a single major political leader in history who hasn’t done something awful.
4 Way Street (1971) by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
When I was young, I was told by various reviews that this was one of the great classic rock live albums of the early ’70s and I was enticed by the talk of guitar duels.
A Little Too Cozy Live at Studio 42 at the CBC May 20, 2016
On Friday we saw a modernization of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, an opera I have never heard before. This adaptation sets the opera in a reality show where contestants are supposed to pledge their love to each other without actually meeting, similar to the original plot I assume.
Whitey: United States of America vs James J Bulger (2014, Joe Berlinger)
Somebody once said, it’s not integrity that matters, it’s the perception of integrity. One of the reasons people freak out at the more minor of political scandals – the ones where there are only hints of impropriety, or where bureaucrats or politicians are accused of over-spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars when the …
Merchants of Doubt (2014, Robert Kenner)
This is a compelling film about how corporations and lobby groups use pundits to undermine scientific consensuses that would otherwise hurt their profits. The film examines the bag of tricks both the tobacco industry and the oil industry have used to fool the American public about both the short and long term health risks of …
Káťa Kabanová; Cappriccio; Concertino (1977, 2006) by Leos Janacek, performed by Wiener Philharmoniker conducted by Charles Mackerras featuring Elisabeth Söderström, Peter Dvorský, Naděžda Kniplová
This set pairs a Janacek opera with two of his chamber music pieces. It’s an odd pairing, but in the era of the CD it was a regular thing when an opera failed to fill out two discs.
Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks (2007) by Christopher Brookmyre
This is not only a well-done mystery but it is also a fine indictment of a certain kind of chicanery, one that drives me particularly crazy. SPOILERS
Conn Smythe Watch 2016
I am watching more playoff hockey this spring than I have probably since the last time the Leafs were in the playoffs. That’s still not as much as I used to watch, but it’s a lot more than than I was watching more recently. And so, for the hell of it, I wanted to see …
Janacek: Piano Works: Diary of One Who Disappeared; 15 Moravian Folk Songs (2001) by Thomas Ades et al.
This disc collects two sets of songs by Janacek; one is a proper song cycle, the other is a collection of folk melodies for piano and voice.
Janacek: Taras Bulba, The Fiddler’s Child, Jealousy (Overture), The Cunning Little Vixen Suite (1992) by Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jiri Belohlavek
This is a collection of orchestra works by Janacek; two standalone works, one overture extracted from an opera, and a suite of instrumental pieces from one of his operas.
Outrage (2010, Takeshi Kitano)
Is this a comedy?
The Violence of Financial Capitalism (2011) by Christian Marazzi
It has been a long time since I’ve read a book this dense. A long time. Maybe grad school, maybe in the years after grad school when I tried to re-read or finish lots of books that I felt I hadn’t spent enough time with in school. Either way, I don’t think my brain is …
The Complete Early Recordings of Skip James (1994, 2009)
This is one of the numerous discs to collect all nine of Skip James 1931 78 records that he recorded before he abandoned his music career – or whatever happened – until being “rediscovered” in the ’60s. This music is essential listening for fan of the blues or people interested in music history. James among …
In the Shadow of the Hill (2016, Dan Jackson)
This is a thorough, engrossing and, for its subject matter, pretty to look at film about a favela in Rio and the problems that have occurred since the police “pacified” it in the lead up to the 2014 World Cup of Soccer. There is a lot here of interest and the film is quite well …
Chasing Asylum (2016, Eva Orner)
When I lived in Australia well over a decade ago, the Australian government would take the “boat people” – refugees coming illegally by boat to Northern Australia, Western Australian Queensland and some Australian islands – who made it ashore and throw them in jails in the middle of nowhere in the Outback. The boat people …
Missy Higgins: Oh Canada (2016, Nicholas Kallincos, Natasha Pincus)
I saw this music video posing as a short film at Hot Docs last night. It’s an animated film about Alan Kurdi. It includes pictures drawn by refugees but most of it was professionally animated (even though it is given the look of a child’s picture).
Blue is the Warmest Color aka La vie d’Adele (2013, Abdellatif Kechiche)
This is an affecting, if long, coming of age story that contains perhaps the most graphic sex scenes I’ve ever seen in a coming of age movie (i.e. a movie involving “teens”). The film goes places other films don’t with the passion of “first love” thing, i.e. explicit sex. But there’s a lot more to …
Top 33 Maple Leafs Draft Picks of All Time
More than a little while ago now (this past summer), Scott Wheeler (of PPP, etc.) claimed that Mitch Marner might be the most talented hockey player ever drafted by the Maple Leafs. And now that the Leafs have the #1 overall pick for the first time in over 30 years, Marner might be only the …
2015-16 NBA Awards
MVP Curry is
Metal Evolution (2011)
Metal Evolution is an in depth examination of metal by the man most associated with covering metal on film – though I have yet to see either of his movies.
The Best of the Classic Capitol Singles (2013) by Wanda Jackson
This is a compilation that, despite its title, appears to contain every single one of Jackson’s singles for Capitol between 1956 and the early ’60s. It shows off what could only be a pioneering fusion of country and rock music that I was completely unaware existed.
The Quest for a Moral Compass (2014) by Kenan Malik
I have been reading Malik’s blog for more than a few years at this point (I think), in part because I feel like he has much greater insight into the issues around jihadism than most of the people writing in North America (who I’ve had a chance to read). I find his approach not only …
A Case of Need (1968) by Michael Crichton writing as Jeffery Hudson
This is a real page turner and it’s easy to see why it’s the book that properly launched Crichton’s career: it’s full of detailed information about contemporary medicine but Crichton uses that detail to drive the plot, not to overwhelm the reader in minutiae (as some “techno thriller” writers do). Though this type of thriller …