J.S. Porter's Latest Posts
4 Must-Watch Movies on DVD
1. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia When you have a pearl in your hand, you don’t show it quickly. You don’t give it away easily. The Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan goes against the cinematic grain of making pictures move quickly on the screen. He moves his pictures slowly. He unfolds a richly layered [...]
Roger Ebert (1942 – 2013) – 10 Things I’m Going to Miss
10. Bravery. He was born in the middle of a war and lived to fight in at least two other battles: the war with alcoholism where the best you can do is fight to a draw and the war against cancer where sometimes the odds are unwinnable. He underwent operations for cancer of the thyroid, [...]
National Poetry Month & Susan McCaslin’s Campaign to Save the Trees of Langley
April is national poetry month. How many are clinking their glasses and toasting the old girl? Some may agree with the poet W.H. Auden who once declaimed in a poem about the deceased Irish poet Yeats that “poetry makes nothing happen.” Susan McCaslin, who won the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Prize from the Alberta Book [...]
Fragments: You, Me & Sappho
From Shakespeare’s Coriolanus 1.1: Coriolanus (Martius) to the citizens – “Go get you home, you fragments.” Is that what we are – fragments? Incomplete wholes. Scraps. So much of the ancient world comes to us in fragments, even in a great poet’s work. Think of Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho and all the ancient Greek [...]
Shakespeare at the Movies
I knew Shakespeare was alive when our daughter after an exhausting day at school burst through the front door and bellowed out, “I’m vexed.” It’s a wonder she didn’t say, “Zounds, I’m vexed.” Yes, Shakespeare lives on as an international superstar in theatre, books, and movies. He still conjures worlds, peoples planets, and wands words [...]
Quentin Tarantino & the Theme of Revenge
He’s the filmmaker of our time. Manic and visionary, he has soaked in cinema, video games, pop culture, cartoons, comics – whatever has colour and sparkle and kick. He’s a conjurer of hyperrealism, a mix master of genres, the embodiment of Cal-i-forn-ia, in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s German accent, and all things L.A. His filmic signature is [...]
Jodie Foster’s Impact at the Golden Globes
If you had a wordle for Jodie Foster’s speech, some of the key words would include: confessional, stories, ledge, intimate, acting, joy, mother, prom queen, thanks, love, Charlie and Kit (her sons), Cydney Bernard (her ex-partner), private, public, soul, honest, real, nervous… She may not be the girl next door (that’s Julia Roberts), but she’s [...]
David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis
“Artists,” according to Ezra Pound, “are the antennae of the race.” Some. Sometimes. In the case of David Cronenberg, one of Canada’s great directors, most of the time. In the case of Don DeLillo, one of America’s best novelists, most of the time. Cronenberg has drawn from visionary writers before. He made his movie Crash [...]
My Dylan
No, not the Welsh poet. Not even the folksinger after whom he’s named. No, Dylan the black dog, my Flat-coated retriever. The one with the long snout, narrow almond-coloured eyes and scraggly ears. The one who runs like a race horse. He anchors my day – opening and closing it with a vigorous walk. As [...]
Film Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild
“Once there was a Hushpuppy, and she lived with her daddy in the Bathtub.” In Beasts of the Southern Wild, Hushpuppy, her daddy and the world of Bathtub can come to an end at any moment. They can trip into non-existence by flood, fire or hurricane. But not while the “Boss Lady” or “The Man” [...]
