Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

After much thought, I decided I would go down to Toronto for at least a bit of the Hot Docs film festival this year. For quite awhile, I have been trying to decide about it—not really feeling like I was in the mood for it this year, but thinking I’d regret it, later, if I didn’t make the effort. Plus, I’ve read that it can be good to not let grief stop you from doing what you enjoy even if you don’t think you feel like doing it. Apparently, chances are you’ll end up enjoying it despite everything, y’know? Now, normally, I go for the whole 10-day festival, but I decided I would just go for the first Friday-Monday (May 1-4 inclusive) this time. So I got a smaller festival ticket package than usual (10 films + I get in free to all the screenings after 11pm) and made a hotel reservation.

I really hadn’t paid much attention to the newsletters that I’d been receiving from Hot Docs over the past few weeks, so I was delighted to discover that two directors whose films were among my favourites at Hot Docs ‘07 are back this year with new films! And both of them are screening during the period when I’ll be there, hoorah! So I’ve reserved tickets for each screening.

A Hard Name is the new film by Alan Zweig–whose previous film, Lovable, I told you about a couple years ago. Based on that film, a ticket to the world premiere of A Hard Name on May 3rd was the first one I reserved.

I expect this will be very different from Lovable and its two companions in his “mirror trilogy”, Vinyl and I, Curmudgeon, however–this one’s not about himself. In fact, he doesn’t appear onscreen and I’m not sure if we will even hear him offscreen. It features interviews with eight ex-cons who talk about their lives inside and outside. I will go into this film with high expectations.

Unfortuately, I can’t find a trailer to post here. Booooo!

(Incidentally, if anyone reading this happens to have copies of Vinyl and/or I, Curmudgeon and/or Lovable, please let me know. I do have the latter, but only on VHS (!). And, seeing as I never even unpacked my VCR after I moved, the tape is little more than a paperweight.)

Objectified is the new film by Gary Hustwit–whose previous film, Helvetica, I have also told you about. This is the other screening that was important enough to me to make sure I had a ticket in advance.

Objectified is about the design–and the designers–of objects that surround us every day. Director Hustwit: ‘Objectified is a documentary about industrial design; it’s about the manufactured objects we surround ourselves with, and the people who make them. On an average day, each of us uses hundreds of objects. (Don’t believe it? Start counting: alarm clock, light switch, faucet, shampoo bottle, toothbrush, razor…) Who makes all these things, and why do they look and feel the way they do? All of these objects are “designed,” but how can good design make them, and our lives, better?'’

To be honest, though, the first film that caught my attention when I started to look through this year’s schedule was Cat Ladies. As a longtime fan of Cute With Chris, the sight of a film about “cat ladies” (the “crazy” adjective left unsaid) made me practically leap from my seat. It appears to be a relatively sympathetic portrait of four women whose cats fill some kind of emotional void in their lives. One household has only 3 cats… but another has hundreds of them.

And each one comes with a box of poo.^©

I also hope to see Necrobusiness, a film by Swedish filmmakers Richard Solarz and Fredrik von Krusenstjerna. Set in Lodz, Poland, it features feuding funeral home directors, paramedic poisoners, murderous morticians… and it sounds very blackly humourous. Right up my alley, in other words.

I can only find a trailer with its Swedish subtitles but it at least conveys the tone of the film…

Over the Hills and Far Away looks really interesting to me, too. This film, directed by Michael Orion Scott, is about a family dealing with an autistic son who they discover has an unusual bond with horses, and their horseback journey through Mongolia in search of a shaman who can successfully treat him.

In stores tomorrow.

This isn’t quite as good as it should be but the idea is there, at least…

This guy, contrariwise, hits all the right (hilarious) notes.

I just went to the café here at work to get a cup of coffee and noticed the St. Patrick’s Day-themed lunch menu included a little horrorsome item called Corned Beef Pizza.

Which made me throw up in my mouth a little.

Many thanks to John Sakamoto for the tip-off on this beautiful version of MGMT’s song, Kids, by Ben Lee.

Oracular Spectacular is one of my favourite albums from the past couple of years but, honestly, I pay more attention to music than lyrics these days so I never really thought much about what they were singing. I’d blahblahblahblah along with what I thought they were saying, but without thinking about it. Ben Lee’s solo acoustic version turns the song on its head for me–with the lyrics front and centre.

When I listened to it for the first time on Saturday morning, I burst into tears.

I have found that music is a real trigger for sorrow in recent weeks. It doesn’t even have to be something as complex as lyrics that set me off–sometimes, it is just a chord progression or the key the song is in that is enough to squeeze my heart.

For the first week or two after Tristan died, I didn’t dare try to listen to any music. Gradually, I started to allow it back into my life. At first, just a little–listening to the radio (which is unheard of for me!) during my commute.

Then I listened to a few disks I’d picked up at a local record store–feeding the nostalgia that had been hovering around me since last fall when I reconnected with some friends from university… music from my past.

Later, at my request, my sister gave me a bunch of Tristan’s music–CDs, home-made mixes, and his iPod. A lot of it is rap and hip hop and metalcore but every once in a while, in one of his personal mixes, I’ll get a surprise–f’r'instance, Stayin’ Alive knocked me for a loop and a laugh one day, sandwiched between a couple of metalcore songs. Listening to his music hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be but the way it is hard is not in the way I thought it might be… What’s hard is hearing one band and wondering, “would he have liked this other band?” Because he’s not around for me to ask.

I keep running up against that subject here–regret, I mean–and I continue to step around it. It is the hardest thing I am dealing with at the moment.

I’ll never have anything to do with computers.

I’ll never go back to school.

I’ll never move back to Sarnia.

I’ll never allow myself to move back in with my parents.

I’ll never get a tattoo.

The “never say never” rule is one that I have learned over and over in my life. Saying I’ll never do something pretty much guarantees that someday I will do that very thing.

Thus, I am inked.

My nephew Tristan used to wear a silver ankh pendant on a chain around his neck. He got it on a vacation in Mexico a couple of years ago and wore it all the time. His mom wears it now. All the time. Without telling her why, I traced its outline after dinner at her place a few weeks ago. Over the next little while, I modified the drawing so that the top loop was reshaped into a heart. Tristan’s ankh was a little lopsided–with one side of the top loop a little narrower than the other–and, after designing a “corrected” version, I decided to leave that “imperfection” as-is. Because, y’know, Tristan wasn’t perfect. And neither am I. A couple weeks ago I took the design down to the tattoist who had done all of Tristan’s tats and had him put it on the inside of my left wrist, facing me.

I look at it all the time and marvel at how much it means to me and how surprised I am at that and how much he would love that I did this.

If only I’d done this while he was here.

I find myself plagued with regrets like that one, and I will try to write about the pain of that soon.