Movie Review: Masked and Anonymous

I'm almost sure this movie is good. If it is good, it's because it hangs in that place were it exists in it's own world. Also, this movie can be best described as someone trying to make a movie out of a Bob Dylan song, not any praticular Bob Dylan song, but whatever this movie is about Bob Dylan has something important to do with it. This is due to the fact Bob Dylan co-wrote and acts in the film.
The basic plot of the film is that Bob Dylan, AKA Jack Fate, AKA Bob Dylan has been released from prison to do a benefit concert, a shaddy benefit concert, but still he's out of prison. Fate lives in what looks like something that is kind of the United States, but has a feel like a South American Bananna Republic. After that all the characters talk they way you'd expect characters to talk in a movie co-wrote by Bob Dylan (it's great), a pretty good soundtrack featuring Bob Dylan songs is played (it's great), encounter various characters bouncing off each other (it's alright), and a bunch of scenes involving political and philsophical discourse.

In all this, I like this movie. This is probubly because I'm a Bob Dylan fan, and despite the fact this is a very minor movie I feel compelled to it because this is more or less the kind of feel I want for the Naos and Helen novel. It's the same basic world, has the same feel and also Bob Dylan is in it. This must be what William Gibson felt after seeing Blade Runner. Because of this alone I'd put Masked and Anonymous up there with The Big Lebowski as one of my favorite movies. (Interesting note, both Jeff Bridges and John Goodman appear in this movie).

To end off I'm putting up this youtube video which has Bob Dylan and his back-up band singing "Cold Irons Bound," another reason to see this movie.

Starving in the Belley of a Whale, a Tom Waits song (featuring Banjo Monkey)

Canadian Literature and It's Relationship To Me

I'm writing this at the public library in my hometown and you should expect more posts from here in recent days. I'm hanging out here to save money as whenever I'm at Revel I tend to buy stuff, usually food and I've already bought a book and an ice cream with the large amount of government money I came in with recently. I can also get more writing done here I imagine. I'll tell you how it goes.
Anyways, Today I'd like to talk about Canadian Literature. It's something that I'm really comfortable with, as I don't really see myself as being involved in Canadian Literature. I'm not familiar with Canadian Literature and have very little knowledge of it other then what I've heard. I read very little Canadian writers. Most of the people I read are either American or British, and among by favorite authors are a Russian and a Chilean. Also, I don't really know if I want to be considered involved in Canadian Literature because I don't feel that Canadian Literature is really taken seriously. Maybe it's because most great Canadian writers haven't been dead long enough, but I just never saw myself as a real Canadian. I just sort of live here. I don't even know if I'll spend most of my life in Canada. The idea of living in another country is seeming more and more appealing, since I feel dangerously close to America sometimes. I'm growing more and more distrustful of America and the capitalism I believe it represents. I'm becoming more and more worried about what I hear of economics, which I'm seeing more and more as a lie, a giant con, that the entire world is being brought into.
Anyways, back to Canadian Literature, I'm wondering right now if I am going to end up in that category because I'm a born Canadian. I don't even know that much about my native literature, except it has something to do about survival. I don't think much of my writing has anything to do with survival. I don't even know if that was just Margaret Atwood shooting off about Canadian Literature. Anyways, because of my ambiguous relationship with my national literature, I plan on doing readings of the following writers in the near future.

1. Robertson Davies (I really liked The Rebel Angels. I found What's Breed in the Bone pretty long-winded and boring though. I figure I have to finish the trilogy off at some point though. I'm hoping it will be better then the last one)
2. Timothy Findley (A friend suggested his book Pilgrim)
3. Mordecai Richler (No reason, he's just Canadian and I like his name or something)
4. Leonard Cohen (I figure I should add a poet and Leonard Cohen is someone I feel I should read more off)

And that's it. After that I feel I have read them I will think I will have a better handle on Canadian Literature. I may also read some Margaret Atwood, though my last English teacher said she came off as an angsty white girl in her novels. Other then that I don't know what else I should do about this. Probubly forget the whole thing.

The Brothers Carrotmazov

For some reason I was thinking of Veggie Tales. For those of you who aren't Christian, Veggie Tales is basically one of those cartoons made for Christians to help express the intricacies of the faith to the little kiddies in ways that are more interesting then reading the Bible, which can be something of a boring read, or even worse reading Aquinas or some. Instead, you get little funny cartoons about vegitables that very from Biblical Retellings, to retellings of the classics with a Christian message.

I was thinking about how they'd redo classics like this. The ones that came to mind are "The Grapes of Wrath,"(done with actual grapes), and "Madame Bovarry,"(renamed Madame Blueberry). These are both books I have yet to read, but I figure I am going to get around to them at somepoint. Still, stuff like Madame Blueberry is different from Madame Bovary. Instead of the Madame Bovary character having a series of affairs, she goes on a shopping spree. This is because the show is supposed to be for kids. It also occured to me, why aren't they doing works by Christian writers? I mean, Flaubert and Steinbeck are Christians, at least I'm pretty sure they are, but why aren't they doing classics by writers who were open about their faith, say Dostoyevsky.

Which brings me to the brunt of todays post, what if Veggie Tales did an episode based on a Dostoyevsky novel.

Now, this can get pretty dark, because the two novels by Dostoyevsky I have read are Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. Crime and Punishment is about a guy who kills a pawn broker in cold blood, and the rest of the novel is basically him being sick, guilty and the reader and him trying to put all this in persepctive. And plot of the Brothers Karamazov is basically driven by sex, lies and murder. Despite this, both novels have what I see as fundamentally a Christian meaning, and both speak much of redemption. Would the folks down at Big Ideas, the guys who make Veggie Tales, be open to a retelling of a Dostoyevsky novel and if so, how would they do it.

The one I'm thinking is The Brothers Karamazov, if only because it is the hardest to actually put into terms of a children's show since the major event of the novel revolves around patricide (alleged patricide in some cases but still). As in Madame Blueberry, they would have to find something that won't shoke the kids and more importantly the parents. What this could possibly be. Which also reminds me that what lead up to the patricide was the fact that the father was trying to seduce a woman that one of the brothers was interested in and who he had left for his wife. This would also be hard to work in. Actually, Dostoyevsky is probubly not a good example for this because of all that is going on in the book. Fyodor's writing is just to complex to make into a Veggie Tales episode.

But the point is, I have this image of the cast of Veggie Tales as characters in a darker and edgier episode based on Dostoyevsky. It's not exactly a bad thing either, since it is still in the same basic format but we're doing the kind of things that I'm experiencing now as a Christian. The nature of faith, the seeming cruelty of the universe. Why is it that they only make Christian cartoons for kids and when they do it can be so optomistic? Maybe I should develop something like Veggie Tales for people my age who are more open to the idea of questioning the nature of there faith. I'll have to make a follow up to this at somepoint.

Friday Youtube Videos (Eastern European Special)

Since the reason I got this new format was to make watching the new wide screen Youtube videos I thought I'd do a special on Youtube videos.

First is the newest sensation, a Ukrainian polka band covering Katy Perry's "Hot'n'Cold." It's like listening to Katy Perry but without feeling embarrassed for listening to Katy Perry. Because it's polka.

Yeah, polka.

Alright, and after that I want to show you a band I discovred called Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird. They're Jewish folk band and they are awesome. I don't know if it's just me, but Yiddish is a beautiful sounding language.

So How Is Your Summer Going, Dylan?

I really hate summer.

There are many reasons for me hating summer. The one that most easily comes to mind is that it is hot and I do not do well with heat. At all. And the problem with this can largely be tied to my feet. They are very sensitive and generally need socks. I tried wearing one of those new rubber clog shoes that my mom picked up and my feet were achy and sweaty. Also, because I hate footie socks with every fiber of my being, I can only wear normal socks and because of the all-powerful laws of fashion I cannot wear shorts and longs socks. It's annoying.

Another thing I hate about summer is that I have nothing to do. This is especially important this summer because I have nothing to keep me occupied except my erratic reading and writing patterns. However, I do feel I have written more then I have written more and some good stuff too. I'm back at Naos and Helen, since I'm now working at them through the medium of the short story. This gives me the chance to explore them in short bursts which my attention span and patience allow. I'm working on two Naos and Helen stories more or less simultaneously now, but one of them is pretty psychological and is getting hard for me to write, since I want the characters to act naturally as compared to the world they live in which is bat shit insane.

On the subject on my ability to write things I am having doubts about my capability in the means of poetry. This I blame on Stephen Fry. I've been trying to read his book The Ode Less Travelled, to get an understanding of how metre works and I don't think I'm that good at metre. I try to write stuff in metre and I'm thrown off. Then I try to write free verse, but I can't get that either and then I feel guilty because I don't read a lot of poetry and when I do I can barely understand it, though recently I did read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock a couple times and I think I got that, although I picked up at some point it was about prostitutes and impotence so that may have helped me. Still, I appreciate T.S. Eliot's poetry and I like his style.

In other news, I sent my short story "Godot is Dead," out to The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction. I'm not sure if they'll take it. I think the story is pretty out there, but I don't know if it is the kind of out there that Bizarro fiction demands. Also, it's a Jack Monsairty story, so it has a "wizard," though I think of Jack more as an occultist, and that might turn them off. I have only sent it out recently and I have yet to here back. I don't know exactly how long I should be waiting, the next issue will be published in October so I imagine before or around I get to University.

Looking into Various Fields of Interest

We went to Toronto yesterday, my family and I. The Dead Sea Scrolls are being shown at the Royal Ontario Museum, and since I'm into the places where Christianity and Judaism meet I figured it would be a fun trip. After that the family split up into two groups, the girls going to see taxidermey animals and my dad and I looking at the antiquities of the Far East. I liked the Buddhas and the big pictures they had of various Chinese religious figures. Oh, and the rubbings of signs on Synagoges, Mosques and Christian Churches found in China. Yeah, they have Jews and Muslims and Christians there, and I'm talking before the Jesuits.

Then we went to Ikea and I began to feel sad because I don't have my own place. I know I'm 19, and very few 19 year-olds have there own place, but damn it I want to have my own apartement. It didn't help that we found a very nice walk in room that Mom said she could see me living in. So I began to feel nervous about my independence, which I'm also feeling a bit off about because I have had some recent confusion with my bi-monthly twenty dollars. Thankfully I got some of the coffee drop-off which can last me through the rest of the day. This lead to all kinds of frustration about how I'm not as independent as I'd like to be.

Also, finally I am beginning to read more on Aspergers Syndrome. I'm currently reading "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome," by Tony Atwood. Now I have to go because I'm talking to a friend.