It also was incredibly hot that day, so despite how nice the downtown area was, air conditioning was something we desperately needed, so we ended up having supper at a very nice Italian place called Mondo Resto-Bar. Later we sought out a music store so I could actually purchase an André Gagnon CD in Québec. That was something I’d been wanting to do right from the start.

As with Québec City itself, we only spent a couple of hours in Trois-Rivières, but the city has a charm all its own, and I’d like to get back there some day and spend a bit more time. I also want to get to Les Forges de Saint-Maurice National Historic Site, which is about a dozen clicks northwest of downtown. It’s a site run by Parks Canada that commemorates the founding of the first industrial community in North America.

It also happens to be one of my André-Gagnon-related destinations.

In 1973, André Gagnon released an unusual album. It was actually two albums in one. Side One was called Projection and Side Two was called Les forges de Saint-Maurice. The first side was a collection of songs as might appear on any album. The second side contained music he had written for a television series entitled—you guessed it—Les forges de Saint-Maurice.

The show ran from 1972 to 1975 on CBC’s French network. It was a soap-opera-like drama set in the mid-1700s, in and around the ironworks, which were the most advanced of their time. Gagnon wrote the theme music and incidental music for the series.

And speaking of André Gagnon music, we did, in fact, find a music store in Trois-Rivières. They have an Archambault there, which is a big chain in Québec, kinda like an HMV with a Chapters welded to the side and a Long and McQuade perched on top. Nice store. Lotsa great stuff.

Only one André Gagnon CD, though. Fortunately, it was his latest, which I did not yet possess. So I bought it.

Now, being the giant fan of this man’s music that I am, I still find it hard to understand why I did not yet have this CD, considering that it had been out for over a year. I’d been thinking of buying it, intending to buy it, and wanting to buy it for quite some time. Still, I had not yet laid down the cash. I can only attribute it to the fact that I hardly buy CDs at all anymore.

No, I am not one of the legion of iTunes junkies out there. I still can’t get my head around paying money for something that I can’t hold in my hand (except for software, which is a whole ’nother thing). When it comes to movies and music, I like to own the disk and the package it comes in.

Call me old fashioned, I guess. Don’t get me wrong. I have an iTunes account. I have purchased apps from the app store. That’s really the only way you can get them. But it’s going to take some real coaxing for me to put a song or an album on my credit card for download. It might happen some day. But not today.

Anyway, it’s all about timing. It was the right time for me to purchase that particular CD, entitled Les chemins ombragés, or Shady Paths in English. (Typographical note: The French language does not capitalize every word in a title, just the first word, unless there are proper names in it.) Examining the back of the CD package, I saw immediately how timely this purchase was, as some of the tracks were recorded with the Trois-Rivières Symphony Orchestra.

Weird. Just weird.

And that was basically the end of the trip. We booted it north after my CD purchase and ended up staying the night in Rivière-du-Loup again, which was nicely parenthetical. The following day we hurtled through the open spaces of New Brunswick, stopping for a nice lunch in Fredericton, and headed home to Halifax.

It was an awesome trip, and I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I took some great video shots, got the lay of the land, and basically prepped myself for further forays into the landscape and culture of Québec. It was a reconnaissance mission (nice French word, that), and I have a better understanding of where things are and what I still need in terms of video.

But I’m not quite finished with the André Gagnon portion of our programme. I didn’t bother taking the cellophane off my CD purchase until I was home in Halifax. We were playing my iPod through the car stereo during the trip anyway, so there was really no need to stick a CD in. When I finally did open the package, I found an extra card along with the standard CD insert. This card listed ten concert dates in locations throughout Québec.

I was stunned. Monsieur Gagnon was touring again. Sadly, the dates listed on the card had long since passed, but there was a link to a website, AndréGagnon.net. And on the website were listed more tour dates, some of which had not yet arrived.

Thrilled and amazed, I booked two tickets.

So, of course, there’s more to the story.

Stay tuned.

(Here’s a promo spot for the television series Les Forges de Saint-Maurice. I don’t know what they’re saying, but it all looks pretty cheesy. As you can tell from the logo on the screen, this is from a retro French network, rather like our TV-Tropolis.)

The plan was simple: drive to Montréal, stopping at various André-Gagnon-related points along the way and taking video footage of attractive and interesting scenes. I had the camera, the tripod, a big-ass SD card loaded, and I was ready to rock and roll. I also had my new iPod touch and was psyched to do some on-the-road video blogging.

Well, you know what they say: The best laid plans… and all that.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a fantastic trip. It just didn’t turn out quite the way I expected.

First off, we had to rent a car, which was prohibitively expensive. Scott, my brother, took care of that arrangement, and we got a great vehicle, but adding the extra kilometers onto the base rental meant that we could only afford it for three days. So, we had to pack in as much as we could.

Secondly, having not been through Québec in some years, I had only a vague recollection of how far the cities and towns were from each other. You can definitely drive to Montréal in a day, but you’re not going to make many stops en route.

I wanted to make some stops along the way.

Ergo, we did not make it to Montréal.

Add to this the fact that I, as navigator, misread my map of New Brunswick and got us on the wrong road for a couple of hours, and you end up with a very late arrival at the Québec border.

Question for later: How in hell do you misread a map of New Brunswick?

Anyway, none of this matters. Scott and I both needed to get away for a bit, and it was a great opportunity to spend some quality brother-bonding time. Changing plans and destinations were ultimately immaterial.

We left Halifax on my birthday, Wednesday August 3rd, and made it to Rivière-du-Loup (Wolf River, if you’re into translating place names), which is just over ninety-clicks from the New Brunswick/Québec border, at the point where the Trans-Canada highway takes a sharp left and starts running along the Saint Lawrence River.

The original LP cover of “Le Saint-Laurent”

Ah, the Saint Lawrence. I was so looking forward to taking in its majesty. It has played such a pivotal role in my experience of André Gagnon’s music that I could scarcely dissociate the two. His 1977 album, Le Saint-Laurent, is easily my favorite of his works, and the title track, a twelve-minute ode to the mighty river, is a three-movement piece that conjures up images of flowing water and stunning scenery and has stayed with me since my first hearing.

The morning of August 4th, we awoke, breakfasted and set off. I was presented with many amazing glimpses of the Saint Lawrence, and for some of those, we were able to pull over so that I could take some video shots. In the distance, across the river, were the mountains of Charlevoix, in a view right off the cover of Le Saint-Laurent. It was a region I hoped to visit soon. It would not happen this trip, but that was okay. We only had three days.

One important stop we did make was at Saint-Pacôme, the town where André Gagnon was born. It’s a small, quiet place, and as with many rural communities, the church is the most prominent landmark. We stopped near the town’s main intersection, and I took a few video shots, but, alas, we really didn’t have time to explore much, so we drove around a bit and then headed back to the highway.

I didn’t even notice the historical signs for the tourists.

(And that, dear friends, is called foreshadowing.)

We made it to Québec City by lunchtime, and I cannot begin to tell you how glad I am that we made that stop. It was not on my itinerary, but we knew by this point that we were not going to make to Montréal, so we decided to stop, have lunch, and take a look around.

I hadn’t been to Québec City since high school, when I went on a Grade Ten trip in February for Carnaval. All I remember from that trip is the dizzying height of the fortress cliff, the insanely cold temperatures, and people on the street drinking alcohol from long plastic tubes. Needless to say, I needed a refresher.

Old Québec is simply stunning. I fell in love immediately, and vowed to return at my earliest convenience. I walked around with my head craned upwards, marvelling at the architecture, the views, and the atmosphere. It was like wandering around an old European city.

We had lunch at a place called La Pizz, a nifty little pizza place tucked into the corner of Place Royale, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, the birthplace of French civilization in North America. Samuel de Champlain began constructing this courtyard area in 1608, and walking into it is like stepping back in time.

And then there was the Château Frontenac, easily the most photographed hotel in the world. It sits atop the fortified cliff and is visible from just about anywhere in the old city. We walked along some of the charming shop-filled streets in the lower city before taking the funicular up to the courtyard around the château. The view from up there is incredible, and the hotel itself is massive, tall, imposing, and utterly photogenic.

It was a shame we could only stay a couple of hours, but we wanted to see how far south we could get before having to turn around and head for home.

While Québec City was not an André-Gagnon-related stop, it reached into my soul and deepened my connection with La Belle Province, a connection I’ve been aware of most of my life.

A connection with my father.

More about this trip in the next instalment. Stay tuned.

Much has happened since that early August rumble down the highways of English and French Canada. The summer was good, filled with adventures and moments galore. It was a vast improvement over the previous summer, which saw me changing jobs twice in as many months and watching my mother go from hospital to transitional care to nursing home. The Summer of Stress, as I have dubbed July and August of 2010, doesn’t have quite the hold on me it once did, but it lives on in memory and serves as a reminder of how fickle life can be.

What a difference a year makes. Summer 2011, which I think I might dub the Summer of Synchronicity, was jam packed with warm-weather goodness. July 30th saw us (my wife Vanessa and I) traveling to Moncton with our friends Rebecca and Ian to see U2 perform. The day was wet, but it cleared just before the opening act (Carney) started to play. Arcade Fire followed them, and then, just after sunset, out came Bono and the boys. It was an experience not to be missed, and it blew us away. We were nearly sucked into the earth by the mud as we made our way off the grounds after the show, but it was well worth it.

Present Laughter poster designed by Terry Coolen

July and August were jam-packed with creative juices. Rebecca and I (yes, the same Rebecca mentioned above) co-directed a production of Present Laughter by Noël Coward for the Theatre Arts Guild. We actually held the auditions on June 26th and 27th, with the rehearsal process running from July 12th through September 20th and the show opening on September 22nd. We had a cast of ten and a production team of nine, and it was a pleasure spending time with every last one of them. Everyone got along incredibly well, there were a lot of laughs, and we ended up with damn good show. I was proud to be a part of it.

Having two directors was a good thing, as both Rebecca and I took time off during the rehearsal process. I managed to get away twice, once with my brother Scott in early August (about which more later) and once with my wife Vanessa and her mom in late August, for three nights at Milford House, just south of Annapolis Royal. It was an incredibly relaxing three days, puncutated by a Saturday morning trip to Upper Clements park, where three firsts occurred for me: My first roller-coaster ride, my first time in a flume, and my first time on a zip-line.

The rest of August and most of September was do-or-die time for the play. We moved from the rehearsal hall to the main stage, got the set finished, the lights and sound in place, and the costumes finalized. Then we opened, then we ran for three weeks, and then it was over. Cast party, hugs, goodbyes, and memories. Props and costumes put away, and make way for the next production.

So, knowing how the post-production blues do tend to kick in, it was good that I had something else to look foward to, a special something that happened just this past weekend. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First things first. I want to talk in more detail about that early August road trip to Québec.

And I will. Next blog entry. This was just the preamble. Turned out kinda longer than I expected.

Big surprise.

Keep pushing forward.

–Eric

Sometimes I wonder how filmmakers (or reviewers, even) can sit back and just enjoy a film if they are so aware of how films are made. One might think that a deep knowledge of craft could pull one’s attention from the film as an entity unto itself and draw it towards the minutiae of the process.

This evening I did a little experiment. Not intentionally; it just sort of happened. I was given a free movie pass at work today (always a good thing), and, in a flurry of spontaneity, I decided I would also use it today. Before leaving work, I checked the Empire Theatres website to see what was playing downtown. There wasn’t much I wanted to see, but I was mildy interested in Contagion, as I had seen the previews and thought that a big-budget, big-cast, high-stakes thrill ride was just what I needed after a day at the office. So off I went, stopping at Starbucks for a chai latté along the way, low expectations in hand.

The film begins with a black screen and the sound of someone coughing. The someone turns out to be Gwyneth Paltrow, whose face nearly fills the screen as the frame fades in from black. She is looking most unglamourous, our Ms. Paltrow, and some small part of my brain nudged me, saying that any film that starts out with a full screen shot of Gwyneth Paltrow’s face looking like it has no makeup on is a film that might just have something a wee bit different to offer the viewing audience.

About twenty minutes in, I started to notice something else: I wasn’t seeing a whole lot of camera movement. My brain perked up, and I started to pay attention to the shots themselves. Sure enough, not many pans or tilts, and no zooms to speak of at all.

Yes, I know. I shouldn’t notice stuff like this. It’s like going to a play and saying afterwards, “Gee that lighting was amazing.” If the tech guys are doing their jobs, you don’t notice the tech stuff. Unless you’re a theatre geek. Or in my case, a film geek (I’m a theatre geek too, but that’s a story for another time).

As I continued to watch, I started to notice other things: The shots were framed interestingly, composed interestingly, focussed interestingly, and even color-balanced interestingly. Color balanced? Seriously? Yes, I’m talking about non-standard, non-Hollywood color balancing of many, many shots in this film.

Once I realized how fantastic the cinematography was, I came up with my experiment: Could I maintain some part of my attention on the construction of the shots whilst still following the story? The answer, dear reader, is a resounding “yes.” It was a filmgoing experience unlike any other I have ever had.

Contagion is an unexpected delight. It is a feast for the senses and fodder for the mind. It is constructed so lovingly, and with such attention to detail, that it builds a believable alternate world, so like our own but so very different in so many ways. It draws the viewer in, gradually, methodically, deliberately, inexorably.

This is not your typical Hollywood blockbuster. It’s a quiet, pensive film. It carries a solemnity that borders on creepiness. The premise is all too plausible, and that plausibility is brought home by the realistic unreality of the shots. The actors are hyper-real in their apparent lack of makeup. The plethora of close-up shots ensures that we see every flaw in every complexion. The sudden shifts from dark shots to bright shots, from warm shots filled with browns and yellows to cold shots fairly crackling with shades of blue ensure that we don’t get too comfortable with a look or a feel.

And then there’s the composition. We see Kate Winslet, or part of her, in a bathroom mirror, and the bathroom mirror is shot through the bathroom door, with plenty of wall visible on either side. We see Lawrence Fishburne talking to a colleague in a lab, with the camera outside the room, shooting through a glass wall, with much of the surrounding area in frame. We see characters shot from low angles, high angles, odd angles. We see Lawrence Fishburne and Jennifer Ehle (any Pride and Prejudice fans out there?) walking down a corridor, with the camera tracking them in a relative close-up, Ehle in the center of frame and Fishburne only half in frame.

And in one of the most striking cinematic shots I’ve ever seen, we see Marion Cotillard sitting with a colleague in an airport waiting area. As she suddenly realizes something, she stands up and starts moving toward the right of frame, and what we thought was going to be another static shot becomes something else entirely. The camera tracks with her as she walks faster and faster and finally breaks into a run. As her gait speeds up, the camera slowly zooms in closer and closer until only her face is in frame. She is still running, and the camera is still tracking right along with her.

That must have been one long dolly track. Amazing shot.

This film made me excited about cinema again. It opened up a whole vista for me in terms of what can be done with camera angles and framing. There are no special effects in this film. There are computer generated images on the computer screens that the characters are looking at within the film, and there are a few freeze-frames, but that’s it. Everything else is right there, in the frame, waiting for us to look at it.

This is an exceptional piece of filmmaking. Director Steven Soderberg (who was also the cinematographer) has done himself and his cast and crew proud. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Wow, another blog entry only five days after the last one. And another video blog, to boot. I must really be jazzed about this upcoming road trip.

Okay, so the sound on this video sucks the big one. I’ll have to learn how to reduce wind noise on the iPod’s microphone if I want to do anymore outdoor video blogging. But it sure was fun talking into the camera out at Peggy’s Cove. It really was a fabulous day.

So far the footage from the day looks good. I haven’t transferred everything to the computer yet, but I like what I’ve reviewed so far. And in putting this video blog together, I learned about a few more features of iMovie that I hadn’t looked at yet.

Video editing is just major fun.

Counting down to the Québec trip.

Stay tuned.

The video pretty much says it all, but I do want to clarify one point: I’ll be using the iPod touch for video blogging while I’m on the road, not for taking actual documentary footage. I have my Canon PowerShot SX20IS for that. Plus, I’ll be taking a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder with me for capturing additional audio.

We’ll be stopping in Kamouraska (André Gagnon’s birthplace), Verdun (in Montréal, where my dad was born), Lachine (also in Montréal, where my dad grew up), Ville Émard (also in Montréal, from the title of André Gagnon’s song “A Ride to Ville Émard”), Forges du Saint-Maurice National Historic Site (from the title of André Gagnon’s song and album “Les Forges de Saint-Maurice, written for a television series of the same name), and Charlevoix (from the title of a movement of André Gagnon’s three-movement piece “Le Saint-Laurent” called “Devant Charlevoix”). I’ll also be taking footage of whatever strikes my fancy along the way. I’m particularly looking forward to visiting Trois-Rivières, a town I’ve heard of many times but know next to nothing about.

Did I mention I’m jazzed?

More updates as planning proceeds.

Just such an event came my way last Friday as I was walking to work. I was at a major intersection, just up the hill from where I live, waiting for the light to change. I looked to my right, and there, also waiting for the light to turn green, was the oldest-looking car I had even seen in my entire life. It was sitting well past the crosswalk, it’s nose nearly in the intersection, and the driver was signalling to the cars behind him, presumably that they might have to go around him.

Needless to say, I gawked. I love old cars (I don’t know many people who don’t, actually), and this was total vintage staring me in the face. I was going to wave at the driver and make some kind of comment, but for some reason I held back. I just looked at the automotive wonder before me and grinned.

When the light changed, I had to be careful of my steps, because my head kept turning to my right to look at the old car. The sound of the engine starting jarred me into the realization that it had been shut off while the car was stopped for the red light. As I crossed the street, the old car got into gear and finally passed me as I reached the curb on the other side.

As I watched it roll along the road, I was treated to a further delight. The driver made a left-turning hand signal and swung across the other lane into the gas station just ahead of me. Needless to say, I was thrilled. I’d get to marvel at this magnificent mechanical masterpiece a moment more.

But I wasn’t being alliterative at that particular instant.

As I passed by the gas station, still looking at the car, which was now stopped at one of the pumps, I decided to seize the moment. After all, I did have my cell phone on me, and it was perfectly capable of taking pictures, even though I didn’t use that function often. So I stopped to speak to the driver, saying something vapid I’m sure he’s heard a thousand times, and I asked him if I could take a picture. He said sure. So I did.

Here it is.

I never did have the presence of mind to ask him what type of car it was, but I did at least manage to ask how old it was. I’m not sure if he said “a hundred years and six months” or “a hundred years in six months”, but either way, that puppy was built in either 1910 or 1911, and that makes it not antique, not even vintage, but brass era, so named for the brass fittings that adorned many of the models manufactured in that period, which lasted roughly from 1905 through the beginning of the First World War.

I’ve done a little poking around on the internet, and from the hood ornament, I’d venture to guess that this specimen is a Cadillac, but I’m not positive. If there are any car experts out there reading this, I’ll be quite happy to stand corrected. Still can’t believe I didn’t ask the man that simple question: “What kind of car is that?”

Oh, well. That doesn’t detract in the least from the fact that Providence provided me with a wonderful opportunity to travel to the past, and I took a moment to stop and smell the gas.

[Aside: Would we call a string of linguistic bits a linguine?]

[Aside Followup Fact: The word “linguine” literally means “little tongues” in Italian.]

I have on occasion been accused of the crime of pedantry in the sphere of language. I will confess to bouts of nitpickiness bordering on pedantry, but as to full-on pedantry, I don’t think I have the qualifications for that. One thing’s for sure. I need to loosen up a bit. While I’m not prone to fits of letter-writing when I read or see something that is grammatically, punctuatively, or orthographically incorrect, I do often cringe, and I do often complain about it.

The English language is going to evolve and grow whether I like it or not. It doesn’t need, or even know anything about, my permission. I might just as well try and stop the tides from going in and out or ask the moon not to change its phase quite so often. That would be sheer lunacy. Pun intended.

I do, in a rather informal yet wildly egotistical manner, consider myself a defender of the tongue. A staunch defender of the tongue, to be ridiculously specific about it. I don’t like lazy language, particularly in written form, and my hackles near scrape the ceiling when I encounter obvious carelessness in wording and phrasing.

But there’s medication for that.

My uptightness was brought home to me in no uncertain terms two days ago, when my friend Asheyna (who often comments here) sent me a link to a YouTube video in which no lesser a literary luminary than Stephen Fry takes the pedants of the world to task for their pedantry. I’m embedding the video at the bottom of this post. Go and watch it now if you want. I’ll wait.

Uptightness aside, I do care about the written word and language in general, and I would no more discourage someone from learning the craft of writing than I would discourage them from blinking at appropriate intervals. Communication is the essence of our humanness, and the better and more clearly we can communicate, the better off and happier we’ll all be.

So, for the aspiring writers out there, I’d like to submit a little list I recently put up on Protagonize, a site I’ve mentioned many times in my blog posts, and one to which I have recently returned. Coincidentally, it’s also the site where I first met Asheyna, who may well be now blushing as she reads a second mention in a single post.

Another Protagonize user started an exercise called “Ten Things You’d Tell Yourself Re: Writing”. I added a page called “Ten Fucking Things I Keep Fucking Trying to Learn About Fucking Writing”. Except I used “@#$#%&” instead of the expletive, as the exercise was not flagged “mature”. For some reason I feel compelled to use the actual jarring word here on the blog, perhaps simply because I can. And get away with it. Maybe.

Anyway, here’s my list as posted on that exercise:

1. Keep writing.
2. Don’t stop writing.
3. See # 1 and 2 above.
4. Do not stop to edit. Editing is a separate undertaking. Stop worrying. In other words, see # 1, 2, and 3 above.
5. Learn the rules. I’m talking spelling, punctuation, and grammar here. If you don’t know the rules, you can’t break them intelligently when the story calls for it. There’s a big difference between breaking the rules for a reason and breaking the rules because you’ve been too fucking lazy to learn them.
6. Don’t let anyone tell you what to write or not write about. It’s your writing.
7. Let the humor come naturally. Don’t force it. If you force it, it will be lame. There is no way around this.
8. Let the muse speak through you. You are a vessel for the creative forces of the universe. Don’t edit the fucking muse. In other words, see # 1, 2, 3, and 4 above.
9. Contrary to what others have said here [in the exercise], there is nothing wrong with fan fiction. It can be done well. It isn’t often done well, but it can be done well. And playing in someone else’s sandbox can be a lot of fun. Go ahead. Prove ‘em wrong. Write a really good fanfic. Just deal with the fact that you can never publish it for money.
10. Don’t be verbose. Don’t use more words when less will do. I mean it. Seriously. For reals.
11. (Bonus point) Have fun, for cryin’ out loud!

And so we rumble towards the end of the single most expletive-ridden blog post I’ve heretofore written. If you’re cringing at my cavalier use of “bad language”, understand that I do it with intent and for effect rather than gratuitously, and please, whatever you do, do not go to YouTube and search for Samuel L. Jackson’s reading of the recently published Go the Fuck to Sleep.

Just sayin’.

Here’s the video I mentioned above. It’s mildly mind-blowing.

What I will touch on, however, is a little bit of insight into this whole blogging process, and what I’ve recently discovered about it.

Well. Ahem. As many of my readers know, I started this whole blog thing just under two years ago, with the intent of writing a post every day. Every. Single. Day. Which I did. For about seven weeks. After that, it became spotty. Sometimes an entire month would go by without a post. I didn’t like this, and it made me anxious and ill-tempered.

The solution would have been to start blogging regularly again, but oh, no, I couldn’t do anything quite that simple, could I? I had to ruminate and cogitate and every other –ate word you can think of—and some I wish you wouldn’t—in order to figure out what my problem was.

Feh. Enough of that. I’m done with beating up on myself. It is what it is. And if I blog, I blog. And if I don’t, well, geez, guess what? I don’t.

But that’s not the best part. You want to know what the best part is? Don’t pretend you want to know if you really don’t, okay? You’re not just humouring me, right? Okay.

The best part is… I’ve figured out the problem.

Yep. Gone and done figger’d it out. I’m pretty pleased, actually.

You see, I’ve been viewing this whole blogging enterprise as something way more important than it really is. I guess it’s understandable, really. Especially at the beginning. Brand new blog, new domain name, getting ready to launch, wanting it to look good, making sure everything’s just so. Yeah, why not be anal about it? It was my new baby, after all. I wanted to bring it up right.

But somewhere along the line, my blog post formula turned into a self-imposed expectation. All my posts had an embedded image and a YouTube video at the end. They all clocked in at, on average, eight-hundred to a thousand words. I had a process: Write the post in a distraction-free text editor (like WriteMonkey or WriteRoom), copy and paste the post into WordPress, find an appropriate image (usually with Google Image Search), then find a video on YouTube to complement the whole thing (or at least not be completely off-topic). Save draft, preview, tweak, save draft, preview, lather, rinse, repeat.

It became onerous. (Aside: I had to look up “onerous” just to make sure I was spelling it right. It just looks odd).

What I have come to realize is that this thing doesn’t have to be perfect. Hell, I’m not perfect. My blog sure as hell doesn’t have to be. Why not use it to just tear off a quick opinion about something? Or fill folks on some project I’m working on? It doesn’t have to be a bleedin’ magazine article every time.

Often times Twitter and Facebook are ideal for just spouting off. But sometimes you need a bit more room. Why not use the blog?

Makes sense to me.

So, on this occasion, inauspicious as it is, I’m forgoing the image and the video. I’m just spewing and venting. And typing directly into WordPress.

So There.

Oh, yeah, and I happen to be a fairly decent writer, too, so storytelling is pretty darn important to me.

Nonetheless, when something really appeals to me and entertains me, I do have a tendency to gush. And gush is what I’m about to do here, so brace yourselves.

Last evening I went to see Thor, the latest instalment in Marvel Studio’s vast campaign to bring their cinematic heroes home. It began with Iron Man and will culminate with The Avengers. In between, we’ve had The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2. And now, Thor.

This was an absolutely amazing film. I’ll say that right at the outset. Quite honestly, I had no idea what to expect going in. I didn’t want to hope too hard, but with Kenneth Branagh at the helm, my expectations were certainly not low. But you know how it is with superhero movies. It can be hit or miss. And this one had the added element of Norse mythology. I really didn’t know how the filmmakers were going to reconcile the gods of Asgard with the slam-bang, hi-tech world that Tony Stark and his ilk have made almost commonplace. So, I took a deep breath and entered the theatre.

Well, I needn’t have worried. Branagh certainly brings his Shakespearean sensibilities to bear in the Asgard scenes, but without the self-conscious awkwardness that one might expect in a movie that attempts to bridge two very different worlds. The dialogue is certainly more formal than in the scenes on Earth, but there’s enough contemporary phrasing thrown in to keep us comfortable.

Oh, and the acting is pretty damn good, too.

I almost don’t know where to begin with this movie. There was just so much about it that was right. It was at various points, dramatic, exhilarating, awe-inspiring, emotional, cool, or just plain funny.

Yes, funny.

Yes, you read that right. The epic Shakespearean-style Norse-mythology superhero film was funny. A lot.

When Thor is on Earth, he’s a fish out of water. And fish-out-of-water stories can be gold mines for humor. The juxtaposition of Thor’s kingly demeanour against his homeless-man appearance is used to great effect, and there are some remarkably funny lines, but the filmmakers don’t milk the absurd situation to death. Thor quickly regains his regal bearing (even in plaid flannel shirts), and the adventure starts to build steam.

I have to take my hat off to the casting and the actors’ performances. I didn’t spot a sour note in the bunch. Chris Hemsworth is excellent as Thor. He’s tall, muscular, regal of bearing, and he delivered his lines like a Norse god should. He was kingly, but not over the top. Well, he did get to chew up the scenery a couple of times, but it was appropriate for those particular moments.

And let me just get this out of the way right now. Natalie Portman is one of the most beautiful actresses on the screen today. She’s absolutely stunning, even as an astrophysicist working out in the desert of New Mexico. Her performance as Jane Foster was completely believable, and she and Chris Hemsworth had great on-screen chemistry. Their characters’ attraction to one another was almost tangible.

Kat Dennings, who plays Darcy Lewis, a co-worker of Jane Foster’s, is an absolute delight. She’s the everyman of the piece, grounding us with pop culture references and her complete obliviousness to the import of the situation. She focusses on what’s important to her, and that makes the whole film infinitely more relatable.

Seeing Anthony Hopkins as Odin was a treat as well. You know you’re in for some good entertainment when you’ve got a veteran actor like Hopkins in an epic film directed by Kenneth Branagh. Hopkins is completely reliable. You never have to doubt that he’ll put in a great performance. And with Odin’s armour, eye-patch, and sceptre, and with the shining panorama of Asgard in the background, he was magnificent.

Tom Hiddleston was also well cast as Loki, though I was mildly distracted at times because of his resemblance to a young Brent Spiner. I always enjoy it when an evil character is slightly sympathetic. You understand the reasons for his disillusionment and feel slightly sorry for him. He’s misguided, but his demons come from a place we can all understand. Again, his performance was not over the top, even though the material and the milieu both lent themselves to excess. He was believable in an unbelievable setting.

The supporting cast were all excellent as well, though I thought Ray Stevenson as Volstagg, one of Thor’s close friends, was a bit too reminiscent of a large version of Gimli from Lord of the Rings (even being tossed by one of his fellows at one point). He did provide some comic relief in the much-more-serious Asgard sequences, however.

The other three companions were also entertaining, and different enough from each other to be memorable. Jaime Alexander as Sif added a nice bit of female kick-assery to the mix. It seems the sisters are doin’ for themselves in just about every movie put out these days, whether it be Angelina Jolie in Salt and Tomb Raider or Zoe Saldana in the upcoming Columbiana. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to have strong female characters; it just seems that it’s almost become a requirement for Hollywood to include them in action films these days. When something becomes formulaic, it’s time to give it a cold, hard look and ask: “Are we doing this for the right reasons?”

But that’s another blog entry entirely.

And I can’t leave without mentioning the wonder that is Clark Gregg as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson. I liked him in Iron Man, loved him in Iron Man 2, and I love him even more in Thor. I’m really glad that Marvel Studios is developing a consistent, unified movie world for the film versions of their heroes’ stories, and having a recurring supporting character like Coulson goes a long way towards developing the needed cohesiveness. And it’s not just the fact of Coulson’s appearance in multiple films that I like. It’s Coulson himself. Clark Gregg portrays him as just an average guy doing his job, but in that doing he presents a tremendous quiet authority. He’s soft-spoken, but he is not to be messed with. He’s a guy who’s seen it all, and every new wrinkle is just another day’s work. This is a character I will anticipate seeing in as many Marvel films as they’ll put him in.

But let’s go back to Asgard for a moment. That world was created almost entirely with CGI, and the effect is astounding. When the battle scenes in Asgard were on the screen, my jaw was literally hanging open. It was incredible. Not since Lord of the Rings have I seen such magnificent computer-generated vistas.

Oh, and did I mention the whole thing’s in 3D? Frickin’ awesome.

Overall, I was absolutely blown away by Thor. It was a helluva ride, and it included so many different cinematic themes, story elements, and genres that it’s hard to pin it down. Yes, it’s a superhero movie. Yes, it’s an action movie. But it’s also an epic tale of a son who would be king and a brother who feels overlooked and out of place. It’s a war story, it’s a tale of discovery, and it’s a story of love between distant worlds. It packs a wallop, and it does it with class, imagination, humor, and style.

I’ve always been a fan of Kenneth Branagh, both as actor and director, and I have to say that this film absolutely cements his place in the pantheon of talented and versatile Hollywood luminaries.

Let’s keep it real out there. Well, as real as possible, anyway.

(Here’s the trailer. It’s cool.)