Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot

I suppose I write about pastis, or red wine, or craft beer, from time to time.

This may give the wrong impression.

Do I enjoy drinking the exceptional craft beer brewed in Québec and elsewhere?

Yes, many of them are quite good.

Red wine and pastis, also quite good.

But, after one too many parties 15-20 years ago, I found ways to generally limit my drinking that enabled me to actually enjoy what I drink, instead of just drinking whatever.

Moving to a city where English isn't the primary means of communication and having to find work helped, as does having to start work between 5 and 6:30am most of the time.

The most important rule: stay away from the hard stuff.

Just one if there's a brand you particularly like, and enjoy it slowly after a hard week of dedicated work.

Plus never drink if you're sad or you feel like you have to, and take your time while you have a drink, take it easy, orinoco flow.

If you feel like you really have to have a drink try drinking something non-alcoholic like soda or orange juice or something with pineapple. Drink 4 or 5 of them. Keep your thirst occupied.

It's way less expensive than alcohol.

And can be healthy in some instances.

There's also non-alcoholic beer.

But come on.

That's disgusting.

Gus Van Sant's Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot looks at several lives destroyed by alcoholism, focusing primarily on a quadriplegic cartoonist named John Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix).

He hit the hard stuff full-speed-ahead one night and wound up immobilized for life.

He's super mischievous though, he doesn't let the misfortune get him too down, zipping through town on his motorized wheelchair like it's a Lamborghini, finding artistic ways to express himself and a corresponding job at a local paper.

It helps that he finds a cool partner (Rooney Mara as Annu), and an Alcoholics Anonymous group whose grizzly empathy helps him tone it down a notch or two.

Strange film

Tough fucker.

It defies expectations inasmuch as you'd expect it to depict John suffering intensely, despair pervading throughout in order to function as a solemn indictment.

It's still gloomy, Callahan's confined to a wheelchair and can hardly move, and he does break down at times, but Van Sant showcases his inspiring resilience as well, like an odd blend of the Le scaphandre et le papillon and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, with hints of Almodóvar.

Well-acted, directed, perhaps too light considering the gravity of the situation, but there are some heartfelt moments of acknowledged bitter regret too.

And teams.

Teamwork.

The cartoons are funny but remember making light of the intense suffering of others can have horrendous consequences if it's applied politically.

If you can't come up with something else that's funny, it's possible that, you suck.

Or are extremely lazy.

A glass of wine and then bed for me.

I swear cultural osmosis has taught me a French secret.

I also spend more freely than I used to.

And still like going out from time to time.

Promised Land

Similar to Django Unchained inasmuch as it doesn't hold anything back, Gus Van Sant's Promised Land provides a polemical analysis of fracking (shale gas exploration), giving ample fictionalized room for proponents and critics to have their say.

Set in a struggling small town, attendantly polarizing economic privilege and historical continuity, differing relationships with land, identity, community, the film persuasively establishes prominent competing practical ideological personalities, each competently nuancing myriad aspects of the debate.

It frankly and freely conceptualizes choice and accentuates the risks associated with maintaining principled stances in opposition to enormous reserves of capital.

And allows each individual viewer to determine their own verdict.

I like taking risks.

I'll go to a casino once a year willing to part with $200 dollars. If I lose it in twenty minutes it's quite difficult to stop playing.

But I do.

I'll try new cheeses, beers, tartares, films, expressions, novels, sauces, ideas, try and predict the outcome of playoff games . . .

But water supplies are not something I like to take risks with. They are critical features of communal environmental well being.

Profits generated from fracking do enable the construction of schools etc. while decreasing a nation's dependency on natural gas imports.

But the likely resultant carcinogenic contaminations will increase medical dependencies as well, thereby placing a further strain on the public purse.

You could get lucky and the procedure may not result in any harmful environmental side effects.

If you don't, you're completely screwed for generations.

The decision seems clear to me.

Milk

Gus Van Sant's Milk presents a beautiful biographical portrait of an extremely brave human being, Harvey Milk. Dynamically portrayed by Sean Penn, Milk overcomes his generally timorous disposition and navigates his way up an extremely steep political hill to become the United States's first openly gay politician. Then, possessing a resolve which never lets up and quickly learns the ins and outs of being a San Francisco City Supervisor, he fights against a movement to have homosexual teachers removed from public schools as well as a homophobic campaign led by singer Anita Bryant (archival footage). His character is molded by an unyielding desire to face his fears head on, keeping physical reminders of their content posted upon his fridge, refusing to move his camera shop from a neighbourhood that is initially hostile, and continuing to seek election after being defeated several times. However, his success incites the hatred of fellow City Supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin), who murders both Milk and Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) after hastily resigning from public office. There's an exceptional shot that may win Van Sant the oscar for director of the year as well, that being a whistle lying on the ground upon which Milk can be seen conversing with a police officer. Whistles were used by members of the gay community to sound an alarm if they were being attacked. During the 70s in the Castro district of San Francisco, it didn't always work.

Paranoid Park

Gus van Sant's Paranoid Park examines the process of creative writing. Within, we enter Alex's (Gabe Nevins) dreamland wherein the boundaries between reality and fiction fluctuate, oscillating within a non-linear structure that closely resembles a skateboarding park. Paranoid is really well crafted and the only component that truncates its performance is inherent in its form. A form which, mischievously enough, has found a way to blame the viewer for their own boredom. Within the film's content, we enter Alex's mind as he tries to write a story. We are then challenged to fill in the details of the story ourselves, as the sustained close-ups and long, drawn out pauses suggest (or the scenes where the music frequently changes). Hence, if you cannot create your own story to fit between the frames, you will likely find this feature dull, for which you only have your dull imagination to blame. Within this frame, van Sant has managed to actively represent what it means to engage in creative writing, criticism, painting, thereby providing his viewers with a split-second crash course in imagination, a masterful display of formative genius.