Outdoor Shakespeare (2025)

I believe I have already bemoaned that the Driftwood Bard on the Beach tour has finally come to an end.  That was consistently my favourite outdoor Shakespeare, and almost every year they put in an appearance at Withrow Park, which is very close to me.  

Shakespeare in the Ruff also performs in Withrow Park.  I run very hot or cold on them, depending on their overall concept, as they never do straight-up Shakespeare.  They are usually trying to decolonize Shakespeare.  I'm generally ok with their adaptations and reworkings as long as they are clear that is what they are doing.  They weren't clear about this for The Winter's Tale, but fortunately I was tipped off and didn't go.  I thought their Portia's Julius Caesar was ok, though not amazing.  There was a very pomo version of Richard III in 2023 that was also ok.  Up until now, I think my favourite production was Midsummer's Night's Dream that was pretty much completely "normal."  However, I would say that their adaptation of Timon of Athens - Tiff'ny of Athens is quite good.  It deliberately sets the play in an indeterminate time between the past and present and even future.  The overall message of the play, which could be boiled down to the song "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," comes through very clearly and there are quite a few stretches drawing directly on the original text.  I'm fairly sure they add on a more ambiguous, even hopeful, ending, though I will need to confirm.  Again, because it was clear this was not straight-up Shakespeare I have no issue with altering and updating the text, and I thought it was very good.  (While I still wish I had managed to make the full play at the Theatre Centre last year, this was a reasonable substitute.)  This production plays through this weekend, so go soon if you are at all interested.  It is basically pay-what-you-can for all performances, and you can pay a bit more to rent a chair, which is generally a good idea.  Unfortunately, their show will likely be rained out on Thurs., but fingers crossed that they can go forward.  The rest of the run should be ok, weather-wise.  Glenn Sumi also liked the play a lot, giving it 4 stars.  The full review is behind a sort of paywall, but you can read the intro here.

Glenn thought Romeo and Juliet in High Park was worth seeing, but not as good as Tiff'ny, (giving it a three star review) and I concur.  I thought Diego Matamoros was very good as Friar Lawrence, and Juliet's father was strong and Juliet was good.  I thought Romeo was not strong enough, and I didn't think the chemistry between them was palpable (unlike the Star reviewer).  And Tybalt was a one-note boor.

Sadly I didn't have my camera, as the set is fairly impressive.  I'll have to settle for published photos.

My seat was actually pretty good, given that I got there with only 15 minutes to spare, but I was stage left, more like this view.

Anyway, it was worth seeing, but Tiff'ny of Athens is the much more interesting play.

I really am running quite late now, but I wanted to mention that, even though I go quite rarely to the Fox, I will be going back in a couple of weeks to see Tati's Playtime.  It has grown on me to become one of my top films, and it is always better to try to see it on the big screen.  I plan on going on the Sunday (and will just have to hope I can find a seat with an unobstructed view!). 

Sorting Through 50 Fall Books

I have a few posts I hope to get through today, but let me start with one that I need to finish to straighten out my library account.  Just a few days ago CBC published a list of 50 books by Canadian authors coming out this fall.  I figure a few of them can be put on hold (though none seem listed on Overdrive/Libby yet), but the rest I'll have to circle back if I see them at the library and am in the right frame of mind or perhaps more likely when I find them remaindered at BMV and I bring them home.  I mean not that I need to add anything to my reading lists and piles, but some of these look pretty interesting.  I guess I'll group them into must-reads and might-reads.

Must Read:

Aliens on the Moon by Thomas King
Self Care by Russell Smith

Might Read:

You've Changed by Ian Williams
Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa
The Trial of Katterfelto by Michael Redhill
Big of You by Elise Levine
Suddenly Light by Nina Dunic
A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News by Cary Fagan

I may end up promoting Pick a Colour and possibly You've Changed, but otherwise I will try to show some restraint and get through everything else I need to read before even considering the might reads.  

I did wrap up Richler's St. Urbain's Horseman but didn't like it much at all.  I sort of liked early Richler more, even though Duddy Kravitz is incredibly crass, but his later novels (this and Barney's Version) just turn me off.  I suspect it is a combination of the main characters making terrible choices and that I am less and less comfortable reading dialogue in what seems very stereotypical English/Yiddish patterns.  I have the same issue with Howard Jacobson, whose work I don't enjoy either.

I have only a few more pages left in Slouching Towards Kalamazoo by Peter De Vries.  This was erudite throughout (a bit over the top once in a while) and quite funny in places, though some of the repeated gags do get a little stale.  One of the better books read in 2025 for sure...  As I mentioned before, this uses Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter as a launching pad but goes in a very different direction.  One of the more amusing bits is the public debate between a minister (the narrator's father) and the town atheist.  By the end, they have each convinced the other and "switched sides."  Interestingly enough (to me), I was in such a debate in undergrad (in a class called "Ways of Thinking") where the point was to have a debate but to argue for (and from) the side you didn't agree with.  I ended up in a debate about religion and leaned heavily on C.S. Lewis (as does the atheist character in the novel, who becomes the narrator's step father!).  I do believe I made a more genuine and compelling case than my opponent whose heart wasn't really into it.  Nonetheless, I was not convinced that Lewis was right at the end!

I do think the next 4 or 5 books will be from the piles in the back study and then maybe I will feel things are just a bit more under control as these piles shrink.  Here's hoping! 

Update (8/25): A different list said that Pynchon has a book coming out in the late fall!  It's called Shadow Ticket.  Given that I never got around to reading Bleeding Edge or even Inherent Vice, there is no point in pre-ordering it, and I can just wait until it shows up in used bookstores...

There are a handful of newly translated books listed in this piece, but the only one that grabs me is Hunter by Shuang Xuetao.  Surprisingly, it is already available as an e-book through the library.  Score!

I've started in on Lord Vishnu's Love Handles.  It is a quick read, and I should definitely wrap it up in a few days.  However, the narrator really grates on my nerves.  He is a supposed to be relentlessly shallow and apparently a bit of a misogynist and basically a frat boy who hasn't grown up.  I guess the tension is all about how this unappealing bro gets serious and uses his psychic powers for good, aided by an incarnation of Vishnu.  But I find the narrator so unappealing that I have a lot of trouble imagining I will hang onto the book, even though it is a signed edition.  I mean the plot isn't that different from Singh's Goddess for Hire, but she is merely shallow and her narrative voice doesn't grate (as much).

 
I'm also a few pages into Denis Johnson's Angels.  This novel is all about the underbelly of America, as two underdogs meet up on a Greyhound bus.  (It's probably time for me to type up my own story inspired by a Greyhound bus ride.)  The novel could easily be filmed by Quentin Tarantino.

I bought a copy with this cover.

It's not bad, though I would have slightly preferred the original Vintage cover, which is where I got the push to read the book in the first place.

Update (8/27): I often go months or even a year between checking out which authors are coming to give readings or sit-down conversations at the TPL.  Not that I haven't seen some very good ones, including Heather O'Neill (up in North York actually).  Anyway, it happened that I looked the readings up tonight, and, while I missed out on Mariam Toews (sold out), there are tickets for Michael Redhill in a few weeks, Souvankham Thammavongsa in Oct. and Gary Shteyngart, whose Vera, or Faith is somewhere in my never-ending list of books to check out, is coming in Dec.  All of these should be interesting, though I've read the most by Shteyngart, so I am looking forward to him the most.  I suspect if he is doing a book signing, I'll pick up Vera, or Faith.  (Apparently, I probably should read Nabokov's Ada before tackling Vera, which might be a bit too much of a big list.)  Also, there is a 250th birthday party for Jane Austen in Dec. at the library.  I might go.  I could use this as an excuse to finally read Persuasion (but hold off on Emma for another couple of years...).

Quick Follow-Ups

It was a bit of a relief to hear that Canadian Stage had needed to cancel on Tues. (and then they did again on Wed. though they probably could have risked it and I don't think it actually did rain).  I mean of course I'm sorry that everyone was inconvenienced, but that is always the risk with outdoor theatre.  I guess that was really what I was driving at when talking to the jerk at the box office, that it makes more sense to just rip the band-aid off and cancel early rather than having everyone travel out (generally far out of their way) and wait and see about a "game-time decision," and I was simply trying to understand when they were going to make that call.  Anyway, because Tues. and Wed. shows were cancelled, I was able to rebook to Thurs. (with a different staffer), which was what I had wanted from the beginning.  Obviously, I hope the weather cooperates (and next week as well when I am hoping to see Tiff'ny of Athens in Withrow Park). I had initially imagined taking the TTC over, but it's only a couple of blocks further than the Revue, and there are definitely some advantages to having the bike to get around High Park, so I am now thinking I will bike it and see how that goes.

The additional exercise would be good.  I actually am now able to fit in a relaxed cut jeans with 36 inch waist (probably more like a 38+ inch waist in a standard cut), but still some progress, and it means I have a decent pair of jeans I can wear!  If I really crack down (and improve my eating habits!), I might squeeze into a size 34 before the summer is over.  Something to strive for, I suppose. 

A few weeks back I was writing about going down various musical rabbit holes.  Well, it has happened again, though I haven't let it completely take over my life.  I recently found out that most, but unfortunately not all, jazz recordings on the Venus label are on iTunes.  I then had to run down the list of all the various Venus recordings I had tried to pick up in the past (mostly Archie Shepp and Barney Wilen, though there are quite a lot of great Eddie Higgins albums and even one or two by Eric Alexander).  Most of them are indeed are on iTunes (and are currently in my queue), but then I was trying to figure out what was missing.  It looks like a couple of tracks from Archie Shepp's True Ballads #2 and Lonnie Smith's Afro Blue and a few by Eddie Higgins, including Bewitched and Haunted Heart.  Fortunately, Haunted Heart is available at Bandcamp, but the others do not appear to be unfortunately.  I was pretty interested in this double album that paired Bewitched and Dear Old Stockholm, but this doesn't appear to be available any longer, even in Japan.  And virtually everything by the New York Trio is available except the album Stairway to the Stars.  Still, I am trying to focus on having access to the bulk of the Venus catalog, which is quite nice overall.

I'm also missing some bonus tracks from Vee-Jay albums by Eddie Higgins and Benny Green.  There does not appear to be any way of tracking these down, which is always a bit upsetting.  Maybe they will surface one day, as I believe this material fell out of copyright, at least in Europe.

Frustrating Day

I'm not sure whether it makes more sense to write about today, which was exceptionally frustrating, including getting screamed at for two blocks by a fellow cyclist who said I cut her off.  (I mean, I did cut in front of her, though I don't think we were as close to crashing as she claimed (or rather screamed).  I don't need to go on Am I the Asshole to find out I was mostly in the wrong (or rather entirely in the wrong but there were extenuating circumstances, namely trying to avoid being hit by a car since I was in the middle lane and not on the far right where drivers expect to see bikes), but that reaction was still so over the top that I'm ultimately going to dismiss her as a kook.)  Or just try to dismiss the whole day as essentially a fever dream.  The second option is probably healthier...

Still, I might as well touch on the many non-work frustrations.  I found out that it is likely to rain tomorrow, which would make going to see Romeo & Juliet in High Park an absolute drag.  I called the box office, first to find out when they would announce it if the show was going to be cancelled, and the guy at the box office was dismissive and rude.  I should have just insisted that as a subscriber, I should be able to switch to Thurs.  I think this is absolutely the last season I bother with Shakespeare in High Park as it is a huge hassle to get there, it is uncomfortable and honestly the productions aren't really that magical.  Indeed, if I am not feeling any better tomorrow (and I likely won't) I may just eat the ticket and forgo the show entirely (and see Tarkovsky's Solaris instead which is certainly more appealing at this point).

I had noticed that my main pair of jeans had a rip in them, and I was going to try to deal with it in the evening.  However, riding my bike (all the way out to Roncy!) ended up widening the rip to the point I'm not really sure I can repair them, and I don't even know what jeans I can wear tomorrow.  So this is a huge drag.

I was going out to The Revue to see Varda's Le Bonheur, which I didn't care much for.  At heart, I can't really shake my Puritanical tendencies and can't get behind a movie where the main protagonist is basically a shit, driving his wife to suicide (after he tells her he has been unfaithful to her), and then he just starts over again with his mistress who agrees to join his family and take care of his children.  So it all works out for him swimmingly, even though he had wanted and half-expected to have his wife while still eating out his mistress...  There are a few interesting films coming to The Revue in Sept., so I'll have to decide if I want to keep coming out there (and with each one regretting not getting the annual membership).  Getting there isn't so bad, but then I usually regret it on the long bike ride home... 

I guess that is probably enough venting for now.  Hopefully things will seem better in the morning (if I can even figure out something to wear).

Quick Thoughts on Stratford 2025

This will be a somewhat short post that I will likely expand on later.

The good news is that the bus trip went very well.  On the way in we were about 10 minutes early and almost 20 minutes ahead of schedule coming back, despite some extra traffic on the Gardiner due to the CNE.  So that was terrific.

It was quite hot on Sat.  Normally, I go for lunch at a Thai place just off the main square and eat outside, but it was too hot for that, so we ate inside.  Then we wandered over to the B & B we were staying at and managed to drop off our bags, then returned to the Avon for Macbeth.  I enjoyed LePage's Macbeth more than I thought I would.  Serious critics and purists hate it for the various cuts that have been made, though the examples that Slotkin was citing seem forgivable to me.  Also, they must have figured out how to move the set around faster than during previews.  The whole production took just about 2.5 hours, which is almost break-neck speed and hardly "glacial," as two critics wrote.  The set is pretty incredible, though I would agree that LePage is more in love with spectacle and the visual look of a play and a bit less focused on the play itself.  Anyway, it does seem almost like watching a movie, and Macbeth seems to be a major hit of the season.  It was extended along with Annie and Anne of Green Gables and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.  And if I read correctly, a touring version of the play will be traveling around Canada next year.

However, in general Shakespeare productions are not doing that well any longer at the festival.  There were lots of empty seats (at the Tom Patterson!) for Winter's Tale, and I heard As You Like It had lots of empty seats, despite getting quite good reviews.  At some point, they may drop down to only 2 or 3 Shakespeare plays per season.  I do wonder if they should try to add in more plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries or Restoration comedy, which would at least bring out the English lit. types.  I think this year, Shaw Festival only put on Major Barbara (and nothing else by Shaw), which I did consider seeing, but their scheduling was so dopy, it wasn't possible to get out there on a day the Shaw bus was running!  I might take one more look but probably won't change my plans at this point.

I didn't enjoy The Winter's Tale at all.  I mean I wasn't expecting to, but I figured Stratford probably would put on the best possible production of The Winter's Tale, and I could see what they did with it.  The jealous rage that comes over the king comes completely out of nowhere (whereas in Othello and I think Cymbeline there is a villain spurring on the jealousy, which is far more believable).  And then there is not even a hint that the Queen is being hidden away by her friend.  And then 16 years pass, as if there would be no opportunity for the King to have second thoughts over that entire period!  I think the plot is foolish, and indeed it's actually even less appealing than its source text "Patient Griselda" in the sense that the boy prince dies (of heartache?) and is not reunited with the King and revived Queen and recovered Princess at the end.  Then the tonal shift in the second half of the play is pretty jarring.  Personally, I found the rural clowning after the intermission just went on and on.  Some of that definitely could have been cut.  And of course, the badly behaved men (Autolycus as well as the King) get off scot-free.  I absolutely hated The Winter's Tale as a play, so I will certainly never go again.  I'd say it is now at the very top of my least favorite Shakespeare plays, displacing The Merchant of Venice.  I'm not really a fan of Cymbeline either, but that one I can at least imagine seeing again.  

Sunday was much cooler, and it did threaten to rain but didn't.  We had a lot of time to kill (really probably too much time on our hands...).  I had heard that the river had been low all summer but recently the water level had come up.  It might have been too late to bring the swans out.  We walked up and down the river a few times and saw ducks and geese and even seagulls, but no swans.  Too bad.

 
We walked through Art in the Park, though one of the artists we liked the most wasn't there that weekend.  Then we wanted up to the Festival Theatre.  I looked around the bookstore but didn't actually buy anything.

We decided to get over to Gallery Stratford.  While I think it is a decent art gallery, it is very small -- only 3 rooms of art.  So I find the admission price ($12) is pretty steep for what you actually see.  However, I do like the park it sits in and the art that is all around the gallery is cute.

I really liked Ransacking Troy, though once again Stratford really doesn't market this properly (much like Napoli Milionaria! from several years back).  It has comic moments but is not a comedy.  It is much more bittersweet and complex and far less (female) empowering than the revisionist take that was promised.  I don't want to say more in case you are going but haven't seen it.  It really is quite incredible in how Shields has woven her play around key bits of The Iliad and The Odyssey (revising but never quite contradicting those texts) and even sets up Aeschylus's Agamemnon.  About the only piece that doesn't quite fit is Electra goes off to Circe's island rather than going home with Clytemnestra, but this could still be retconned into the rest of the Oresteia if needed.  I'll be thinking about this for some time to come.  If anyone brings it to Toronto, either transferring this production or a new cast & crew, I'd go again.

About the only downside is that I was very unimpressed with the vegetarian options at Tom Patterson (and we were a bit too tired by this point to march downtown for a burrito or something), so I didn't have lunch and then just had trail mix on the bus back and didn't actually eat dinner until 10 pm!  So that wasn't ideal.

I read about 200 pages of St. Urbain's Horseman and 100 pages of Slouching Towards Kalamazoo, and I should wrap both of those up this week.  Slouching Towards Kalamazoo riffs so heavily on Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter that I am considering reading this in the next month or so, as it is a text I skipped over* in high school!

I may add more thoughts on the trip and my thoughts on the plays if I have a chance.

I guess Stratford has "officially" announced the next season, a few days after it had completely leaked.  I think I will probably only go see Di Filippo's Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Miller's Death of a Salesman, but perhaps I'll change my mind.  (Actually The Tao of the World is an update of The Way of the World set in modern Singapore, and I'll likely see that.)  My wife surprised me by saying she wanted to see Salesman as well.  I mean I certainly like The Tempest and Importance of Being Earnest, but I've seen them so many times and just can't really justify the expense of Stratford for that...  For that matter, I saw Godot not that long ago at Stratford (with Brian Dennehy!), and I'm currently on the fence on going again at Coal Mine.  I'm definitely not going back to Stratford for that. 

* Poking through my old blogs, it suggests that somewhere along the way I did read The Scarlet Letter, but I certainly do not remember this!  That is extremely odd, though I suppose not unheard of given the sheer volume of books I read in my 20s and early 30s.  I think I'm still up for trying to reread it this fall and see if any of it starts coming back to me.

Time Out of Joint

I'll be heading over to Stratford fairly soon.  This time around, I am going with my wife and we are staying over one night.  (I just dug up the B&B confirmation.)  We'll see Macbeth.  I'm trying to ignore the fairly negative reviews that LePage's directorial choices have gotten and will try to enjoy it more as a spectacle, maybe more along the lines of Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, which departed from the core text completely in places.  Still, I hope one of these days to see a straight production in Toronto.  I think I saw a stripped-down version at Alumnae (up in the tower) with a fair bit of doubling, and then before that it was Bard on the Beach in 2012!  So it's been a while.  (I'm not counting the puppet version that was done at Red Sandcastle or the Goblins* doing Macbeth at Tarragon, even though both were interesting in their own way.)  I guess it is a bit late to point out that "Time is out of joint" is actually from Hamlet and not Macbeth...

Then I am seeing The Winter Tale by myself in the evening.  I've heard very good things about this performance, though I don't care for the play at all.  Still, I guess it is something to check off my list.**

Then on Sunday we are seeing Ransacking Troy which is a complete overhaul of The Iliad where the wives of the Greek warriors intervene and apparently haul them away from Troy, so some sort of a happy ending?  It should be interesting at any rate, and then we will take the bus home.  I'm hoping we will get back home around 8 pm.  I may have enough energy to get to the gym, or that may be pushed off until Monday.

It turns out that tonight, it is possible to do lane swimming at Jimmie Simpson tonight after work at 8 pm, so I will plan on doing that.  I also am able to catch a live stream of Eric Alexander and Vincent Herring at Smoke, which starts at 7.  So my plan is to watch the very first part of the stream and go off and get my laps in, as I obviously can't swim over the weekend, and then I should be able to rewatch on Sunday evening.  (Typically, the streams are watchable for 48+ hours.  Here's hoping.)

My wife is going to do a grocery run today, as again the bulk of the grocery shopping happens on Sunday.  I believe I should be able to cook a dish for later in the week Sunday evening, maybe with the Smoke stream playing in the background.

Plenty of other things I could discuss, but I really need to run.

Edit (8/16): It may already be gone but the 9 pm set from Smoke was available as a complimentary stream hosted by All About Jazz.  You can poke around and see if you can turn it up on their site.  I tuned in about 5 minutes late to the 7 pm set, but it was available for immediate rewatching, which was super helpful.  I think I'll be able to check it out again tomorrow, though hard to say for sure.  Similarly, the 9 pm set may be up through the weekend, but that would probably be it.  Anyway, I have to get ready to go.

* Speaking of the Goblins, I had asked if they were bringing their version of Oedipus Rex to Tarragon, and, while they were hopeful, apparently they couldn't make it work, so I am running back to Stratford for a matinee performance in Oct.  I'm sure it will be great, but it still would have been preferable to see this over at Tarragon.

** Curiously, Shakespeare in the Ruff did a version of Winter's Tale where they made some key inversions of the text but then didn't say they were remixing Shakespeare.  I just couldn't support that and didn't go.  It's much better when they do something like Portia's Julius Caesar or this season's Tiff'ny of Athen where it is much more obvious they are doing something odd with the text.  I do plan on see Tiff'ny of Athen.  Still a little disappointed that I couldn't get over to Theatre Centre to see a proper Timon of Athens, but I just ran out of time before my New York-DC trip (which is more or less the last time I will set foot in the States until Cheetolini is out of office or dies of natural or unnatural causes).

Wrapped Up Kurosawa

Last Sat. I saw the last of the films in the Kurosawa retrospective over at the Revue.  They had 8 films, and I saw 7 of them, skipping over Yojimbo, which they had shown only a few months back.  I was taking a look at my progress, and this means I have now seen 17 (of 30) films by Kurosawa and 11 of them on the big screen!  Not bad.  I think I did miss out on The Bad Sleep Well in the past year or so.  I'd say it is moderately likely that The Bad Sleep Well or Red Beard (many consider this to be one of his greatest films) show up at the Revue or Paradise (or even TIFF, not that I check their schedule that often).  I do think it is less likely that Rhapsody in August will turn up, even though it seems pretty interesting.  I should be able to squeeze this in at some point this month.

Some minor SPOILERS below if you know nothing about Kurosawa's films...

SPOILERS (you have been warned)...

I enjoyed Ikiru much more this time around, compared to my second viewing, though it still has some pacing problems, including a bit too much time spent in the company of the hack writer, who serves as his Mephistopheles for a long night of entertainment and debauchery.  I also don't like how much time is spent with the young female junior employee (who quits to go off and make toy rabbits).  But even she is pretty clear that it doesn't feel right to spend time with him, and she sets him off on his last life-course correction.  One thing I am slightly ashamed to admit is that I thought the drunk hack writer was actually the yukaza boss slumming it for one evening.  (I have a bit of face blindness when it comes to actors in black and white films, and in particular generic pretty girls...)  I thought that was the explanation behind why they backed off on trying to develop a red-light district at the park site, but indeed it was more that Shimura was beyond worrying about bodily threats and thus when they found they couldn't intimidate him, they moved on to less troublesome ventures.  (Not sure this would actually play out this way, but it makes sense in the context of the film.)  Anyway, the novelist was played by Yûnosuke Itô, who is also the "horse-faced" chamberlain in Sanjuro and one of the selfish executives in High and Low.  Seiji Miyaguchi, who played the yazuka boss, was one of the most effective samurai in Seven Samurai and has a small cameo as a "phantom samurai" in Throne of Blood.  He also plays a prosecutor in The Bad Sleep Well, so I'll have to keep an eye out for him.  He shows up in other directors' work as well, most notably in Ozu's Tokyo Twilight, Early Summer and Early Spring, Kinoshita's Farewell to Spring, Naruse's Flowing, Kobayashi's The Human Condition, Kwaidan and The Inheritance (I'm fairly sure I've seen The Inheritance, but I borrowed it from Robarts just in case not).  Most of these were fairly small parts, with Seven Samurai probably being his most impactful role.

I'm not quite sure where Ikiru sits now in terms of my favorite Kurosawa films.  It's not the top spot, but somewhere in the top 5.  I think High and Low is perhaps my favorite, so I'm glad I saw it again.  I do like the second half better, though the first offers up an interesting moral dilemma of whether to ruin oneself financially to save another person's child.  (Quite coincidentally, I am about halfway through Downing's A Narrow Time which is about a missing child, presumed to be kidnapped, though there are some hints that the child was convinced (by someone else) that her mother was a bad person and left willingly.  It's very hard for me to read about children in danger or indeed those that turn against their parents (as in one of the "Julieta" stories from Alice Munro's Runaway).  I was going to post something more on this, but I don't really have the time right now.)

I thought it was somewhat interesting that Kurosawa really was able to bring an awful lot of his acting troupe back in as cops in the second half of High and Low, including Kanji Watanabe as a senior officer helping to coordinate the on-going search for the kidnapper (after the chauffeur's child is released unharmed).  I've been reading the reviews of Spike Lee's remake of High and Low (Highest 2 Lowest), staring Denzel Washington, and most reviews seem to indicate he struggles with the first half of the movie (perhaps not quite as claustrophobic as the original) but that the second half is really great.  I'll probably go see it.  It seems to be out in the States but not Canada yet.  Should be released soon.

Seven Samurai was amazing.  This was definitely a superior experience to watching it a few months back when it came to Carlton (where I found out about it too late to go).  They even put in the intermission at around the 2 hour mark, which was much appreciated.  

I would say I liked Sanjuro more than Yojimbo, though both were good.  In Sanjuro, the samurai is made to think much more about how to avoid violence and to be a "sheathed sword."  Though he certainly still has near supernatural prowess.

I'm not sure how many of these I would go see again (or even for a third time), but it will depend on the circumstances.  I would probably go see Ran again, given that the screening at the Fox was far from ideal.  However, my focus is on trying to see the rest of his films on the big screen for the first time...

Most days I did bike over to Roncesvalles, which usually wasn't too bad going over, but a bit of a hassle coming back, as I was just tired.  One evening (I believe Monday), it was quite late and I came very close to hopping on the streetcar with my bike but I didn't.  This was a rare case where the traffic flowed very well and the streetcar left me behind.  I did catch up to it in the downtown (when it had to stop to pick up passengers...) but at Jarvis it pulled ahead again for good.    

Most nights I got back quite late (between midnight and 1 am), though one evening (Sunday?) I was able to stop off at Thai Room in Cabbagetown and pick up an order to go.  (Which reminds me - I was overhearing something about "Small Town Swingers" who already know everyone in town that would make a great song, if I get bored and want to see what happens after it gets passed through AI, though I hope I could do a better job...)

So I got a lot of exercise but not much reading time, which is generally the story of summer.  Nonetheless, I did finish The Leopard (though I still haven't watched the movie!) and Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem and reread Calvino's Invisible Cities.  I had hoped I would be further along with Richler's St. Urbain's Horseman, but I stalled out a while back.  I will go ahead and take that and Slouching Towards Kalamazoo on the Stratford trip this upcoming weekend.  After this I will alternate between the books in the first two categories in this list, with a bit more emphasis on getting through books piled high in the study.  I would say the next round of books will be Lord Vishnu's Love Handles, Canetti's Auto da Fe, Denis Johnson's Angels, Hollingshead's The Roaring Girl, Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Russo's Empire Falls and perhaps Matthiessen's Far Tortuga.  There are a few others likely to slip in there, but this would be a good start.

I'll just close with an anecdote that seems so Toronto.  On Sat., High and Low was an earlier screening than most of the others, and we left the theatre around 9.  I actually forgot my bike was parked further south (closer to Pizzazola's where I had had enough time to grab a slice before the show but was still annoyed I had missed out on dropping in at Bau-Xi by about five minutes, but that is a story for another time).  I retrieved my bike and started for home.  It was still so hot out, and I figured if I biked flat out I could probably make it over to the Kawartha Lake ice cream shop on Danforth by 10.  (It closes at 10 most days in the summer.)  So I did that, cutting up to Bloor around Parliament, as the terrain is flatter there than in Riverdale where it is a really steep hill.  And indeed, I made it over in 45 minutes, which is pretty good time (certainly faster than the typical transit time when you factor in waiting on the local bus...).  The line was fairly long, but I believe the general rule is that as long as you are in the store by 10 and in line, they will serve you.  Nonetheless, there was an older couple that got extremely offended when asked to vacate their table at 9:55, so the staff could clean up.  When we finally got to the counter, the couple in front of me just took their sweet time choosing two different samples each and then left without ordering anything!  Just the sense of entitlement of holding up the line at this late hour and then not ordering a thing.  So Toronto.  I actually saved half of my order and somehow got it home on the bike.  However, I did eat it in the morning rather than the next evening, which had been my original plan.  I really need to cut way back on those sorts of treats, and I definitely do not go as often as I used to, and I have cut back on chips and other snacks, though I could still do more.  I'm still stalled at 15-20 pounds over where I want to be.  Even 5 years ago it was definitely easier to lose weight, but the biking helps to some degree.

With that, I really need to go.