Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg is one of the oddest and most charming films I have watched since I started this project. In a love letter/rejection notice to his beloved hometown, he creates an oddball documentary that blends the fantastic and the real, while purportedly portraying Maddin's escape from the ever-wintry city. Personal history vies for space with historical vignettes, all filtered through a dream landscape that obscures reality. Maddin uses recurring characters, such as his mother, played deftly and domineeringly by Ann Savage (far removed from her femme fatale roles of yesteryear like Detour ), and himself, played by Darcy Fehr, usually asleep on the train that never can leave the city. The film has to be seen to be believed, and I highly recommend it. The eerie narration and dead pan humor of the narrator's script are worth the price of admission alone. I will mention a few other high points because I cannot capture them all. Here are a few key scenes/events/v...

That time of year is creeping up again. The leaves are starting to change, the wasps are buzzing by windows, and the temperature has yet to drop. Indian summer lays heavy upon us. Like a veil, it keeps our minds on the summer, even as preparations for fall are made. As the days become shorter and the nights become longer, I change my attitude towards music. Often a complete genre shift is necessary. I begin listening to fall records, which tend to be not so different from my rainy day ones -- the tempos slow, the lyrics tend to be more poetic, if not more suggestive. They recall going back to school, good cups of hot cocoa in darkened kitchens, stretching out in the cool grass, bonfires ablaze; these images help us transition to Winter, when we are so often stuck in the house. Whereas Winter, especially January through March, finds me listening to heavier music, fall is perfect for slow and brooding jams. Literate lyrics and story-tellers mark the change of seasons. Autumnal rec...