Police, Adjective

Polițist, adjectiv (Roumania, 2009)
Police, Adjective
dir. Corneliu Porumboiu
rating: ✭✭✭

Even a slow policier has to have a plot with pacing, hardly apparent here. A young plainclothes officer stakes out some teenagers smoking weed, but has doubts about the law. Certainly the film has promising qualities of cinéma-vérité, but they are too casually developed, if at all.
dura lex sed lex

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty
Спящая красавица
chor. Marius Petipa (1890)
recension: Yuri Grigorovich (2011)
Bolshoi Ballet
with Svetlana Zakharova (Princess Aurore) and David Hallberg (Prince Désiré), and Artyom Ovcharenko (Bluebird)

simulcast from Moscow, 20 November 2011

It was the first ballet premiere on the newly inaugurated renovated main stage of the historic State Academic Bolshoi Theatre. A most recent and authoritative revision by Yuri Grigorovich of the company’s iconic Sleeping Beauty / Спящая красавица, it was simulcast from Moscow with stars Svetlana Zakharova (Princess Aurore) and David Hallberg (Prince Désiré). The production was of course sumptuous with Svetlana Zakharova, a paragon of poise and beauty, earning thunderous applause for a matchless rose adagio. David Hallberg, slight of stature but strong, entered stage with superb leaps and youthful ardour as amorous prince. Artyom Ovcharenko’s light and elegant Bluebird variation was memorable in the second act.

Romeo & Juliet

Romeo & Juliet
chor. Alexei Ratmansky (2011)
National Ballet of Canada
with Guillaume Côté (Romeo), Elena Lobsanova (Juliet), Piotr Stanczyk (Mercutio), and Jiří Jelinek (Tybalt)

This new choreography is fully Renaissance in costuming and true to Shakespeare dramatically. Sets are often sombre and basic, making the dance all the more intense: lyrical scenes of young love, rollicking crowds in the town square, sinister ball of the Capulets, all to end tragically in the tomb. To-night’s performance (2011-11-19) with the first cast was polished, lively, and exciting. The principals fully expressed a range of emotion, from infatuation and love to frustration and despair. The choreographer ended on a quiet note of closure in an interpretation that felt fresh and incisive.

Harvard befriends Facebook

>Mark Zuckerberg, class of 2006 (dropped out 2004), CEO of Facebook, revisited Harvard on 7 November 2011, meeting briefly with President Drew Faust, then faculty and students. He reportedly told students to find whatever it is that they’re passionate about and follow it, if they feel that it’s right: follow your heart, and things will fall into place. Obviously it worked for him.
[Harvard Gazette, November, 2011]

His personal fortune is currently in excess of $17 billion.

Remembrance Day 2011

Governor General David Johnston, Ottawa, 11-11-11
Remembrance Day is not a national holiday in Canada though banks and government offices are closed. It is a commemoration of all the country’s war dead, and more generally of all who have served, or serve, in the armed forces, past and present. In Ottawa the event at the National War Memorial is organized, not too impressively, by the Royal Canadian Legion.

On 11-11-11 the Governor General brought dignity to the scene along with the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers, along with the year’s Silver Cross Mother. Various chaplains added more solemnity (and some atrocious French accents), a female trumpeter in blue uniform tried not to flub last post and reveille, while a minute of silence at 11 a.m. was ended by the boom of ceremonial cannon. A children’s choir cheerfully and bilingually sang the royal and national anthems accompanied by a miscellaneous military band. Token soldiers stood at attention, outnumbered by militia and busloads of cadets. RCMP and Royal Military College cadets in scarlet added some typical colour to a Canadian public occasion of minimal pomp and circumstance.
The day’s numbers felt a bit mystic: 11-11-11

Irrepressible Elton

Love Lies Bleeding
chor. Jean Grand-Maître  (2010)
Alberta Ballet

As much a crowd pleasing musical as ballet, the piece is bright, dynamic, and at times wonderfully and appropriately homoerotic. Based on the life of Sir Elton John, it moves briskly through 14 of his songs from Bennie and the Jets to Saturday night’s alright for fighting. The staging is constantly inventive with projections and innumerable surprises, and almost more detail than can be immediately absorbed. The dance itself is strong, imaginative, and right in the fast moving sequences.

Bolshoi inaugural

The remodelled, reconstructed State Academic Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (founded 1776) was inaugurated with a gala of opera and ballet on 28 October 2011. The event was not simulcast in Canada, unfortunately, but I often thought about it during the day. After 80 years of neglect the building was in danger of collapse. The present works, from foundation upward, took six years at a cost exceeding $700 million. The magnificent theatre and its artistic companies, opera and ballet, are world treasures.
www.bolshoi.ru

Spartacus

Spartacus
Spartak Спартак
chor. Yuri Grigorovich (1968)

Bolshoi Ballet, in Paris (2008)
with Carlos Acosta, Aleksandr Volchkov, Nina Kaptsova, Maria Allash
Decca DVD (2009)

A legacy ballet of the Soviet era, Spartacus survives as a signature piece of the Bolshoi Ballet, a work of heroic proportions and artistic demands.The courageous but hopeless struggle of slaves against their imperial Roman masters takes on allegorical life on stage. It represents an unending challenge regardless of odds.

The present choreography, dating from 1968 now classic, communicates the message on a grand scale without losing the human dimension, a progression of scenes building logically to a tragic climax.

Carlos Acosta is admirable in the 2008 performance, but so too is Aleksandr Volchkov in the demanding role of Roman tyrant, Crassus. While women have significant roles, the ballet is primarily for men. In an interview on the Decca DVD Carlos Acosta cited Spartacus as the perfect role for him, and culmination of his career.

La Esmeralda

La Esmeralda (2009 recension) was first simulcast of the Bolshoi season: bravura and virtuoso dance sans pareil with principals Maria Aleksanova and Ruslan Skvortsov, and amazing Vladislav Lantratov with Ekaterina Krysanova (Acteon and Diana sequence).

La Esmeralda Эсмеральда
chor. Jules Perrot (1844), Marius Petipa (1886, 1899), and others
recension: Yuri Burlaka, Vasily Medvedev (2009)
with Maria Aleksandrova, Ruslan Skvortsov, Ekaterina Krysanova, Denis Savin, and Vladislav Lantratov
simulcast from Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow

The White Ribbon

Das weiße Band . Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (Austria/Germany, 2009)
The White Ribbon
dir. Michael Haneke
Cannes, 2009, Palme d'Or
rating: ✬✬✬

It's a grim movie set in a north German village on the eve of WWI. It is a world of its own, with predictable progression of seasons and generations, hierarchical, and socially repressive. Yet events happen from time to time that remain unexplained.

The film certainly is gripping, even disturbing to watch but, at 145 min., long, unresolved, and ultimately unsatisfying. Years later a teacher is recounting his experiences in the village. He never got to the bottom of mysterious, violent events then, and neither does the audience now.

It's a dour tale of dirty secrets and religious repression, of hypocritical adults and scary, enigmatic children. [Martin Morrow, CBC News, 14 January 2010]

Hon. Jack Layton (NDP, Toronto-Danforth), 1950-2011

I am not sure that a state funeral is appropriate for leader of the opposition, but it is happening on Saturday, 27 August 2011. The body was taken to the foyer of the House of Commons to-day to lie in state.

My friends, love is better than anger. 
Hope is better than fear. 
Optimism is better than despair.
 So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. 
And we’ll change the world.
[last message of le bon Jack, 20 August 2011]

Certainly he was colourful, energetic, and spunky, but neverthless less than a statesman. Still, he was always a friend of gays, minorities, and underdogs, and worked to improve their condition.

NDP leadership gaffe

I find it preposterous that the NDP would choose a recent member of the Bloc Québécois, still currently enrolled in separatist Québec Solidaire, to be the interim party leader. Nycole Turmel (Hull-Aylmer) may be federalist now but the past is entirely relevant. She was in the Bloc for four years, until January 2011, yet says she was always federalist.

I detest this level of political opportunism, and question the judgment of the NDP in this important matter.

Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands), Green Party leader, sees no problem with Turmel's affiliations, perhaps because of her own tergiversations. That finishes her in my eyes.

South Africa: unbalanced lives in transition

Disgrace (Australia, 2008)
dir. Steve Jacobs
rating: ★★★★

With focus on a libido-driven academic egotist the film ventures into racially ambiguous, troubled post-apartheid South Africa. It is a disturbing, brutal, and frank story about intersecting lives unbalanced.

Manic Swan

Black Swan (USA, 2010)
dir. Darren Aranofsky
rating: ✶✶✶

A relentless film about an artist's descent into hallucination, self-mutilation, and madness with scenes of bulimia, hysteria, lesbian fantasmes, it is a horrible imposition on the viewer and distortion of the ballet world. I hate this film that bizarrely hijacks a great classic ballet.