Packed Weekend

The weekend was packed, as usual. Highlights include:

  • seeing the National Ballet of Canada on Saturday afternoon. It was a mixed programme, but I was there to see Monotones I & II, choreographed by Frederick Ashton. The music was Erik Satie‘s Prélude d’Eginhard and Trois Gnossiennes for the first part, and Trois Gymnopédies(which you will hear in the film The Royal Tenenbaums, though it’s not on the soundtrack) for the second. Satie was at least fifty years ahead of his time, writing spare, beautiful music that would be right at home in films. Combined with the minimalistic costumes and set decoration, the piece would have been right at home in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mesmerizingly beautiful.
  • watching, on Saturday night with our little film group, The Philadelphia Story (1940), with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart. Razor-sharp and filled with intelligent laughs. Why can’t they make films like this anymore?

Hockey Gold!

As I write this, the symphony of car horns is almost deafening outside my window. Cars are cruising up and down every major street with Canadian flags fluttering in the breeze. This is about as patriotic as we get as a nation, celebrating a hockey victory. The game was exciting and much closer than the 5-2 final score would indicate. Tonight, it’s good to be a Canadian.