Foreign Correspondent

Back in the mid-to-late 1990's, I discovered on my new cable TV service some channels that catered to the more sophisticated cinema fan. Not that I was sophisticated or anything, but I was a movie fan, for sure. Channels like Bravo and Showcase (here in Canada) broadcast all sorts of programming that fell into the realm of foreign, independent, and art-house film. This was a world that was very new to me. Until then, my preferred flicks included Matrix, Star Wars, Alien, and Rumble in the Bronx. That would change.

It took a while to warm up to subtitles in foreign language films, but the highly creative and avant-garde visuals and even music won me over. It was on these "alternative" TV channels that I first saw Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, and Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy of films. There were also The City of Lost Children, The Scent of Green Papayas, Life is Beautiful, and Belle Epoque. Also The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. I learned a bit about the directors of these movies (and others) and sought out more of their pictures. 

Kieslowski's films and posters

are among the pride of my collection

City of Lost Children director Jean-Pierre Jeunet created one of my favourite movies of all time, Amelie. As a fan, I've seen all but one of his cinematic treats. Such a sense of whimsy and fantasy, and sometimes melancholy and darkness. 

Peter Greenaway envisioned striking images and stories in films composed of scenes of beautiful composition and lighting, nature and architecture... these and other contrasting themes delivered maximum power. The Belly of an Architect was a fascinating exploration of a twisted, tormented man through highly dramatic means.

Roman Polanski, his questionable personal life aside, was one of my first favourite directors, with his weird and wonderful horrors Repulsion and Fearless Vampire Killers, and later non-genre films Chinatown, The Ninth Gate, and The Pianist. Many of his works are considered classics of cinema, his dark themes and quirky character studies meticulously rendered for the silver screen.

My television introduction to the world of foreign and art-house films set me on a path that continues to this day. I've come across many great pictures, old and new, by foreign movie-makers, including heist masterpiece Rififi, gripping Brazilian crime thriller Elite Squad, tense French spy gem Army of Shadows, and exciting Hong Kong bio-pic about Bruce Lee's martial arts teacher, Ip Man.

Within my favourite genre, horror, I discovered overseas film-makers who were exceptionally talented and universally recognized. Jacques Tourneur was noted for his film noir approach to low-budget horror classics, like Cat People, Curse of the Demon, and The Leopard Man. Georges Franju made the supremely disturbing Eyes Without A Face, and though it was released in 1960, it still shocks. Italian fright master Mario Bava assembled two of my  favourites, Black Sabbath and Black Sunday. Lucio Fulci is considered the "godfather of gore", though I've probably only ever seen one of his movies. Not quite my thing. Dario Argento directed stylish thrillers, including Suspiria, but again, not really to my taste.

All these years after first viewing on TV the Three Colors trilogy by Mr. Kieslowski, I revisited the trio of movies with a new and greater appreciation. Kieslowski's other work included The Double Life of Veronique (now among my favourite films) and his Decalogue series. Moody and layered in nuance, visually and musically evocative, and the acting is always expressive, often subdued and contemplative. 

And one Guillermo del Toro established himself as a purveyor of dark fantasy, among other filmic delights. I like a lot of his work, my first exposure through his bizarre little vampire tale, Cronos. Then Mimic caught my attention, though it was more stylish than strong in story. His Hellboy movies were fun, but I hated Pacific Rim. It was his masterwork Pan's Labyrinth that impressed me and the rest of the world and put him on the map. I love his funny little touches to his movies, like insect creatures, whether benevolent or malevolent. 

Before I wrap up, I must make mention of Jonathan Glazer, the British filmmaker responsible for adapting Dutch novel Under the Skin to celluloid. Though not as truly "foreign" as the other stuff I've mentioned, this particular movie does fall heavily into the art-house category. In Under the Skin, we rely on subtext to determine our bearings in this oblique tale of alien abductions in Scotland. The experimental and aesthetic nature of the film may be polarizing with viewers, but I for one, love it. Dark and creepy, its lack of dialogue contributes to its eerie and unsettling atmosphere.

Though Goldfinger is not a foreign film, this

foreign - Danish - poster is among the coolest

I've seen (and own)

Soundtrack To Our Lives

I saw some interesting statistics the other day that broke down the different ways that we listen to music these days. A Nielsen survey of the U.S. came up with some thought-provoking numbers. The full article is here. 

All this got me to thinking about my own music listening habits, and how they've changed over the years. When I was a teenager in the late 70's and very early 80's, all of my music was played on my home stereo. That included radio and recorded music (on records and tapes). No digital files or even CDs for portability back then. Even when the first Sony Walkman and its imitators came along, I didn't immediately jump on that somewhat expensive bandwagon. At that point in my life, I was so rarely "on the go" that I had little time or need for music to keep me occupied. But when I wasn't at school, I was at home a lot, and that meant I put my turntable and tape player through their paces. And whenever I was hanging with friends, we'd be blasting tunes pretty much full time. It wouldn't be a stretch to say I was listening to music up to forty hours a week. Maybe more.

During those teen years, I'd say I split my music listening fairly evenly between radio and recorded media (like records, etc). Radio was my main source for new tunes and even old ones that I had yet to experience. I also bought magazines like Hit Parader, Circus, Kerrang, and a few guitar magazines to keep current with the scene. I picked up only the occasional Creem, Spin, Billboard, and Rolling Stone mag. Those weren't as focused on rock and metal as I wanted. All of these publications were to me then what the internet is now: a way to keep in the loop on all things music.

Through concerts, albums, and videos, Kim Mitchell

provided the soundtrack to much of my life

Into the 80's, I was travelling by bus between cities on a fairly regular basis, so my Walkman knock-off (a Sanyo, I think) got a lot of use. I was buying and dubbing a lot of cassettes back then, building a good-sized collection. My radio listening may have dipped a bit at that time, when my many tapes became my world. Plus I was hearing a lot more live music, living so close to a major centre where music artists frequently performed. I was living on my own for the first time, attending college, and making my own rules much of the time. Pretty sweet.

Upon graduation, I soon found a real job in another city, so off I went. It wasn't very long before I upgraded my home sound system to include one of those new-fangled CD players. Then I focused on amassing a new collection, re-buying a lot of favourite albums for the second, and sometimes third, time. Portable music mattered less to me now. More settled, I hosted and attended more parties, so a good stereo was crucial. 

Once I bought my own car, music listening increased yet again, zipping around the city and on long haul trips for visiting or vacations. I was making a lot of mixed tapes from my CD collection, and these got constant rotation in the car, along with local rock radio. Around this same time - in the 90's, I was jamming with friends, figuring out how to play guitar like a real musician. That never happened. But we listened to a lot of music back then. Our lives revolved around music. 

Geddy Lee, too, was the voice of my demographic

I saw several concerts a year, many bar gigs, and bought recorded music at a fast rate. It was almost a competition with friends to see who had the bigger collection. Silly, in hindsight. I was listening to music almost non-stop every day. On the drive to work, at work (I had a solitary desk job), on the way home, at home, out at a bar, party, or concert. As time passed, I listened to less and less radio as my tastes veered toward more eclectic and experimental musical styles, like jazz, electronic, and progressive rock and metal. 

My listening habits today contrast sharply with those of days gone by. I won't even include the full day of background "muzak" (satellite radio pop and rock oldies) we are forced to endure at work. I do my best to block that out, anyway. Back home, I need some peace and quiet after all of those junk tunes on the job. When I work out, which is running, I always listen to my MP3 player. That alone might be close to a few hours a week. I may listen to part of an album as I prepare to do each run, just to get pumped up. I don't often listen to music in the evenings, though on weekends, I'll let my loaded CD carousel play endlessly for hours while I write and clean my apartment.

What's markedly different in these modern Internet times is that I discover new music via YouTube and the odd other website. I never listen to AM or FM radio any more. The repetitive programming and obnoxious ads on radio drive me to distraction. And on YouTube, not only do I check out old and new songs and albums, but I also watch some of the concert videos. I rarely attend concerts these days, so the availability of live shows online... and displayed on my slick flat-screen television fulfills that need quite nicely.

I'm probably logging fewer than twenty hours of music listening per week on average. But considering my Late Baby Boomer status, I'm sure it's typical that I'm listening to a lot of music from my younger years. Like lately, my CD carousel has been spinning 80's rock and metal like Journey, Accept, Megadeth, and Priest. 

Picking and Tuning

I just finished reading an article about Fender's upcoming guitar gizmos. Apparently, the company is aiming to produce technology that might encourage more beginner guitarists to stay the course, stay confident, and become proficient on the instrument. It seems there are already scads of tuning apps out there, including one from Fender competitor, the legendary Gibson company. 

To differentiate itself from the competition, the company's goal is to create an app that can link to future Fender digital products. An "identity layer" would recognize what the guitarist is playing and then recommend songs and guitar tab appropriate to his or her skill level and musical tastes. The app would hear the player attempting new songs, and could suggest new guitar strings, different tunings, or even a new effects pedal to achieve the desired sound. Pretty cool, huh?

And since the guitar tab available online is rarely perfectly accurate, the Fender app could save a person the time wasted on sub-par tab, including struggling with online tutorials. Where was all this great stuff when I was hashing away on my plinky acoustic back in the 70's?

I fought with that instrument in a sort of love/hate relationship. I cursed the high string action that threatened to sever some of my fingers. I knew nothing about guitars back then, and simply soldiered on. I cut myself repeatedly on the high E string trying to hold down weird barre chords. Eventually the callouses built up on my fingers and the flow of blood was minimized. 

The early pop/rock tunes I tried out were mostly Beatles, from a big songbook I got one Christmas. The chord boxes were the most useful bits, while the song's melody written in musical notation was almost never applicable. I did pick out sections that jived, like the main riff to Day Tripper. That was one satisfying day. It was even better when I could play the riff smoothly, at the correct tempo, and within something that resembled a full song. Sort of.

During my college years, I learned parts of a lot of songs on that old acoustic. Rush, Triumph, Scorpions, and so on. My repertoire was growing somewhat, though that hard-to-navigate guitar held me back. When I finally bought my first electric, an ancient Kent 12-string (I played it as a 6-string), I enjoyed playing those songs more, but something was still missing. A little more ability and better equipment would have helped.

Man, how times have changed. Looking back, I have always felt that my travails on the guitar were part and parcel with the learning process. I never looked at it as time wasted; learning some theory, and developing finger speed, technique, and strength were all part of the deal. I never thought it was going to be easy. Yet even with all of these modern-day shortcuts, there is still a lot of wood-shedding to be done. That means time spent doing fretboard exercises and practising songs. 

And back in the day, there was no guitar tab or online videos (no online, either!). No easy access to every song in the world. If I wanted to listen to a tune so I could learn it, I'd have to either buy it, borrow a record from a friend, or wait for it on the radio. And pretty much every guitarist learned from listening to the original recorded song. 

These new-fangled Fender and Gibson toys would actually have helped me in some ways. Like I might have progressed faster on guitar. My road was a very long and slow one. I got a few tips from a friend in the beginning, but after that it was just me and my ears. I listened to songs, and figured them out on guitar. I played by ear. And I knew right from the start that I was never going to get it perfect that way, but that seemed to be the only way. After a while, I came to enjoy my versions of songs, and I didn't fuss over every little thing being perfect, to sound just like Jimmy Page or Alex Lifeson.

But I was limited in some respects, like in the guitar solo department. I never even attempted solos until I had played for almost fifteen years. By then, I was a decent rhythm guitarist, but since I cut short my theory education, I never learned proper scales, or at least no more than one (and I couldn't even tell you which one that was). Using that one scale, I added other notes I heard, and improvised some solos to favourite songs. This felt like a necessity at the time, because I was jamming regularly with friends, and we needed to play something that resembled a full song. The drummer, and the occasional bassist or rhythm guitarist, didn't seem to give a rat's ass how good my soloing was, so I just kept on. 

With a newer guitar,a sharp-looking Phoenix Phantom "telecaster" copy, I felt better about my sound. I went through a couple of baby-sized amps until I found a beauty of a Fender, which sounded amazing and had the power to compete with my friend's drum kit. Then I threw in a chorus pedal and a Metal Zone distortion pedal for much more versatility. I was rockin'. 

I felt reasonably confident with my reckless playing methods and at least had fun with the jamming. That went on for several years, playing a selection of our fave tunes, stuff like simpler songs by Metallica, Megadeth, Scorpions, Kim Mitchell, Rush, Lenny Kravitz, Kiss, and others. I remember one time when we really got groovin' on some song (it might have been Enter Sandman), some other people entered the room, and the next thing I knew, a little dance party had broken out. I felt a strange high that night... besides the Jagermeister surging through my veins. This was a musical high. That same feeling hit me once or twice since, while jamming with my drummer buddy. We always seemed to "click" when we played, whether approaching an actual song, or noodling and improvising. Both scenarios created some very cool moments, when we hit just the right notes at just the right time. Everything flowed beautifully, and Jagermeister wasn't always involved, so we knew this was real and not imagined. 

Ever since I first held that crappy old plinker on my lap, I've felt that guitar was a part of my life. I played almost daily for many years, then a little less often when life became an adult life. I'd say I was pretty diligent for a little over twenty years. Then I sort of drifted away from rock music for a while, not entirely, but enough that I wasn't hearing new songs that I wanted to play on guitar. I was giving jazz, classical, electronic, and some dance music a chance. Broadening my horizons.

Occasionally I came back to the guitar, trying out the old and familiar tunes, but that ritual became boring for me. I sure as hell couldn't suddenly zip off some jazz or classical on the axe without more advanced training and a lot more practice. So I became even less interested. 

Some years passed, then I came full circle again with my music listening. Not entirely dropping my new-found interests, but just easing back enough to make room for old favourite albums by guys like Judas Priest and Pink Floyd. Stuff like that. Yet my guitars (an acoustic and an electric) remained in their cases, gathering dust. Once in a long time, I'll haul out the acoustic and pluck away for a few minutes, maybe a half hour at best, then back it goes. 

It's hard to describe how what was once such an all-consuming passion has dwindled to a thing that I only feel guilty about not doing. Why don't I play? If I had achieved a more solid grounding in theory, or at least some scales, I could probably learn some of those more challenging songs that now interest me, like the blistering Priest assaults or the sublime Floyd meanderings. But I don't have the chops. And I don't think I even have the interest in learning new things in order to get there. I have a lot of hobbies and past-times. I juggle them well enough, but have let the odd thing go to make room for something new. And guitar was one that fell to the back burner. 

I doubt I'll ever forget how to play (it's like a bicycle, right?) but I do feel rusty whenever I do pick up the guitar. Not much speed now, and licks are a bit clumsy. Nothing a little practice couldn't fix, but my heart's not in it now. 

If Fender can build me a motivation enhancer, then maybe I'll get back to the axe. For now, I'll just be a dedicated music listener.

Tall Tales

I'm a reader. I always have at least one, occasionally two, books on the go. I enjoy both fiction and non-fiction but lean more heavily toward imaginative stories. I've read all sorts of fiction, though my preferences have changed over the years. I tend to go for genre titles, favourites being spy thrillers, crime fiction, mystery, and some westerns. In my younger days, I went more for horror, science fiction, and fantasy, but rarely delve into those realms nowadays. The Sherlock Holmes collection I bought and read voraciously as a teenager remains intact, though I haven't dusted that off in decades. Maybe it's time?

At present, I am enjoying the final book of Michael Moorcock's heroic fantasy series about Elric of Melnibone, Stormbringer. I read a lot of swords and sorcery stuff when I was in my teens but have since only dabbled a tiny bit. My return to the Moorcock books after many decades has been most satisfying, mainly because they are so well written, and hold up nicely over time. The fact that each of the six books in the series is a slim novel says a lot. Moorcock has an energized, direct, and lean writing style, nothing like J.R.R. Tolkien's wordy and weighty Lord of the Rings saga, which I waded through a few times in my younger years.

Going back just a few years, I began picking new releases off the store shelves, something I had never really done before. Normally, I'd haunt used bookshops, hunting for old treasures. By my new strategy, I found some wonderful new fiction: The Sisters Brothers, Lone Wolf, and Shadow of the Wind, to name a few. All excellent stories that I know I will reread in years to come. Apparently, a Sisters Brothers film adaptation may be in the works. Fingers crossed... hey, it's John C. Reilly!

I've also found some authors thanks to movie adaptations of their work. I was so taken with art-house film Under the Skin that I sought out the novel by Michel Faber. A riveting science fiction story, yet with several differences from the movie, not to mention a lot more exposition. Then I tackled Faber's massive but highly pleasurable The Crimson Petal and the White. Similarly, I found a Jo Nesbo crime thriller; his book Headhunters became an amazing film, so I made note of the novelist's name from the screen credits. Then I located another one of his books, The Snowman, which was quite good. 

Friends and family urged me to try out Oryx and Crake, the first of a trilogy by legendary Canadian author Margaret Atwood. I loved the book, and eventually read the entire series. All great, though the final instalment  was a bit weaker. And as luck would have it, the kings of quality television, HBO, are adapting the stories to the small screen.

Being a fan of espionage and military special operations, I ploughed through fascinating non-fiction that included Secret Wars and Seal Team Six. The former was heavy with government and political details, quite fascinating, and the latter was a revealing and exciting look at the special units that handle terrorist threats. On the lighter, more imaginative side, I loved working my way through just about every spy novel by Len Deighton over the span of several years. Highly entertaining and realistic, and some of his series (like the Game, Set, Match trilogy) were downright funny. Years ago, I took it upon myself to pore through every James Bond story written by creator Ian Fleming. I even collected most of Bond's continuing adventures by authorized writers after Fleming's passing. Some were good, some not so good. Gardner and Benson produced some of the better work. Oh, and a new one is on its way... by Anthony Horowitz. Must be sure to snap that up.

About a year ago, a friend urged me to try out All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy. The modern (1950's) western is expertly realized with attention to characterization and suspenseful storytelling. Though I was put off just a little at first by McCarthy's disuse of punctuation, I came to love his methods. Even his sometimes lengthy dialogue entirely in Spanish did not put me off. I found it added realism, and I very rarely tried to decipher the meaning. It didn't matter. The same goes for English language movies that don't use subtitles for non-English dialogue. The technique adds something to the finished product. 

I was so taken with All The Pretty Horses that I rounded up the remaining stories in McCarthy's "Border Trilogy". Every book was a winner. Then I moved on to his standalone novel, Blood Meridian, which was equally enthralling. This guy is a genius. I plan to check out more of his work, including No Country For Old Men. Its film adaptation was stunning, as we all know.

Long before my McCarthy fixation, I fell in love with Larry McMurtry's sprawling Old West epic depicted in his Lonesome Dove novels. McMurtry captured my attention with the first book, so  I was compelled to buy up the remaining novels in rapid succession. Thankfully, they were all easily found in used bookstores. The man's expressive prose evoked the beauty, majesty, and danger of the Old West, while spinning a complex yarn peopled by the most likable (and some hate-able) characters this side of the pan handle. And I think it was the first time I ever teared up while reading a book. If you've read Lonesome Dove, you'll know what I'm talking about.

More than a decade ago, I discovered Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt adventure stories. I was heavily into collecting and reading the many novels he'd already released. One of his earliest, Raise the Titanic, is perhaps the best of the bunch. I amassed over twenty of the Pitt marine thrillers, then called it quits. The stories were becoming weaker and Cussler was less involved, employing his son as co-author. That series had run its course for me.

An old friend turned me onto the crime romps by Lawrence Block. This prolific genre writer pumped out several entertaining series. My favourites followed the clever and silly exploits of cat burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, and Evan Tanner, the "spy who couldn't sleep", an even more exaggerated version of James Bond, if I ever saw one. Less humorous were the Hit Man books (still some laughs in there), and darker still were the Matthew Scudder tales. 

Exploring the crime genre further, I branched out into Donald Westlake territory, where I found some gems. I loved Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone series, and though I initially enjoyed his lean, sparse prose, I later found it repetitive and unimaginative. The television adaptations starring Tom Selleck actually improved upon the books, thanks to a stark and quiet atmosphere set by moody music and camera-work, and deliberate pacing.

I checked out a handful of other mystery and crime writers for years, but eventually tired of many of them. Folks like Howard Engel, Sue Grafton, and Janet Evanovich, all of whom I gave up on due to the rather tired template they used for every novel they pumped out. Maybe less so with Engel but the other two are guilty as charged. 

Quite by accident, I stumbled upon a Patricia Cornwell mystery some time ago, and that led to a long stretch (still going) of catching up on her many forensic science investigations. Still, they have become rather cookie-cutter, but what else can you expect when an author churns out a book a year? Something's got to give. I have, however, come across some books by Michael Connelly, and I have to say I'm really digging them. In fact, The Closer is on deck.

Creeping into another genre, I restored some of my interest in the macabre with a few modern tales. As a teenager, I read several early Stephen King books, both novels and short stories, but lost interest as I "grew up". Suffice it to say, I came back to King a few years ago when I read The Dark Half and Dolores Claiborne. In the 90's, I reread Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire, then leaped onto the bandwagon to devour her subsequent bloodsucker novels, and found something even cooler in her Mayfair Witches series. But again, I reached a point where I'd had enough, and left Rice behind. The same with Rice wannabe Nancy Baker, who I actually met at her stop in town while on a book tour.

The weird and wonderful world of Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy impressed me as a teenager, and I was pleased to finally own my own copy, all three novels collected in one volume. And I loved it all over again. A tremendous writer with style and imagination. I will enjoy this again someday.

More recently, I've been trying out some new releases by other authors of dark themes: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova (one of my all-time favourites... a hypnotic real life Dracula novel); The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (a mystery about books - does it get any better than that?); and The Demonologist, by Andrew Pyper (lighter but still enjoyable fare). 

In the non-fiction corner, more recent reads have included Tina Fey's Bossypants (which made me laugh until tears flowed); Who I Am, by Who guitarist Pete Townshend (a detailed and revealing look at the man and his turbulent and creative life); Quiet (which talked about shy, less chatty people... like me); and Full Count (a colourful recounting of the history of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball club).

Other older favourites are The Odyssey (the ancient Greek epic), The Club Dumas (adapted to film as The Ninth Gate - both rank high on my list), The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson (I love it, but am having trouble getting through Great Shark Hunt), Boys Life by Robert McGammon (which has a Stand By Me vibe, but with a horror element), and Mary Stewart's King Arthur novels of the 80's. 

I'm barely scratching the surface of all of the books I've ploughed through over the years, but you get the idea. A fairly wide variety, and some deeper exploration of certain genres and authors. 

Turn the page....