The Prestige: "Are You Watching Closely?"

Now Playing: Gomez - How We Operate

It’s best to watch The Prestige, Christopher Nolan’s latest, knowing as little of the plot as possible. Suffice it to say that the movie concerns two 19^th century magicians, Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Rupert Angier (Hugh Jackman) whose friendship is quickly soured and twisted by tragedy. A game of one-upmanship ensues, with both Borden and Angier obsessively trying to improve their own tricks while sabotaging the other man.

The first half-hour of The Prestige is Christopher Nolan’s Pledge - the initial part of the magic trick where the magician shows you something supposedly ordinary – as he show us what seems to be nothing more than a vendetta film, with nice set-dressing and period props, but told in a entrancingly non-linear way, using nested flashbacks and multiple narrative threads. At one point in the movie, Borden is reading Angier’s diary, in which he documents his attempts at translating Borden’s diary, which is encoded in cipher, which goes on to describe the early acquaintance of the two men.

The Turn – where the ordinary object does something extraordinary – comes when Borden creates a trick called the Transported Man, where he walks into a closet and comes out of another, entirely separate closet several feet away. How he does what he does & how Angier tries to replicate The Transported Man serves as the narrative thrust that propels the movie into The Prestige – the payoff, where the astonished audience tries to figure out the trick, usually without success. Nolan’s a filmmaker, not a magician, so he does tell you the secret, revealing clues throughout the movie that add up inexorably until you gasp with revelation.

The Prestige is better than entertaining – it’s intriguing, with a twist so deliciously macabre it feels like Jonathan Creek – The Victorian Years. Neither Borden nor Angier are conventional heroes or villains – simply men obsessed with the art of illusion – and the movie succeeds because it pulls us into that obsession, because we want to know these men’s secrets just as much as they do. Bale and Jackman both do good work here, ably supported by a cast that includes the always awesome Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson and David Bowie. The cinematography and editing are impeccable – you don’t even realize what they’re hiding – or even that they’re hiding something - until the dénouement, when you’re stunned by the sheer audacity of it all.

(See the Trailer)

Stopgap Measure

I'm caught in the throes of blogger ennui.

Oh, woe.

On the positive side, I have found something that'll help you bide the time till a more substantive post arrives. Ladies and Gents - 'Kya Surat Hai' by the Bombay Vikings, a song that I found irresistibly funny when it first came out in 1999 or thereabouts.

A-hiking we went (and now my feet hurt)

My Dad and I went hiking Sunday afternoon, starting out at Edwards Gardens (at Leslie and Lawrence) and finishing at St Clair Station: here's some of what we saw en route.

Immediate Environs

From My Backyard
Beware Kids Playing Street Hockey

Neighbour's Frontyard

"Them colors sure are purdy, huh?"

Potentially Diabetic (But Not At All Camera-Shy) Squirrel

What to do when you have a craving for Chinese food at 3 am

The other day I was talking to a friend on msn, and weirdly enough, we were discussing friendship, and I said: “...that's the whole point of a friend: they stand by your side, they support/defend you...”

Then I watched Lage Raho Munnabhai (Keep at it, Munnabhai) and I realized that I was just so wrong. Friendship is about more than just caring and support; true friendship means kidnapping a Chinese cook from a hotel when your friend has a hankering for Chinese food.

See, Munna (Sanjay Dutt), a local goon, is apologizing to his best friend/ lieutenant, Circuit (Arshad Warsi), for hitting him: “I have to apologize to you. I haven’t slept half the night; all these old memories were whirling in my head. Remember when I was shot in the belly? I couldn’t sleep, and I told you I missed mother? You put my head on your lap and sang me lullabies. And then I raised my hand to you? ... Remember that time I told you I wanted to eat Chinese food at 3 am? You went and kidnapped the Chinese cook from that 5 star hotel. (pause) What delicious Hakka noodles those were, no?”

None of my friends have ever offered to kidnap a chinese cook when I want Chinese. Nooo, they insist on going to a restaurant and paying for the food.

*sulk*

Jokes aside, Lage Raho Munnabhai is one of the funniest and most heartfelt movies to come out of Bollywood in the past few years. Rang de Basanti had the message, but not the humour, and Sanjay Dutt’s befuddled Munna is eminently more relatable than Aamir Khan’s angry DJ. It has the same basic message as Anupam Kher’s Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara – ie, that it is more important to keep Gandhian values in our hearts than to erect statues and memorials – but unlike the latter movie, LRM is neither a lecture nor a guilt-trip. MGKNM, while wonderfully acted, had an undeniably moral-science-lesson feel to it. LRM, on the other hand, has characters whose very fallibility endears them to us. When Munna is slapped once, he turns the other cheek, because Bapu said so. But when the other cheek is slapped, he dishooms the slapper, because, after all, Gandhiji never said what to do when both cheeks were slapped, right? As Munna might have put it: apun tere ko bolta hai ki ye ekdum mast picture hai.

Plus LRM has this guy in a cameo role. There was much screaming chez Sharon when he showed up. (Screencaps by Maja, who will henceforth be referred to as the BEST. SCREENCAPPER. EVER.)

PS - If you do watch it, or have already watched it, and Hindi is not a language with which you’re that familiar, I’m wondering whether the subtitles do a good job of differentiating between Munna and Circuit’s tapori-speak and every one else’s standard Bombay Hindi. I’m just curious if they caught that distinction, because a lot of the funny came from that.

The politician's guide to idiocy

Gay Perry: Look up idiot in the dictionary. You know what you'll find?
Harry Lockhart: A picture of me?
Gay Perry: No! The definition of idiot. Which you fucking are!

Quote from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), courtesy of IMDb

Toronto lawyer Stephen Ledrew, who served as president of the federal Liberal Party of Canada from 1998 to 2003, was the last high-profile candidate to announce his decision to run for mayor. Ledrew is an idiot.

No, seriously.

Not only does the man owe Revenue Canada $364,140 in unpaid taxes, he’s actually proud of it. You see, Mr Ledrew, fine upstanding citizen that he is, says that he needed to put his children through private school rather than pay his taxes. In his own words, as quoted in the Toronto Star: “I owe taxes. The taxpayer can wait. My children can not. I was proud of my choices, my priorities. I'd do it again. Any father knows his children are the most important thing." (emphasis mine)

As John Barber in the Globe and Mail put it: “Has any would-be politician ever said anything stupider than that?” Public schools close because of lack of funding, a lack caused in part by twits like LeDrew, who don’t pay taxes and don’t care about the public system because their darling little angels attend exclusive private schools. Not only is he an unrepentant criminal, he’s publicly indicated his recidivistic intent – and now the man has the gall to run for public office?

*head explodes*

Like I said, LeDrew is an idiot. Don’t encourage him. On November 13^th, don’t vote LeDrew.