alice in wonderland

I saw Alice in Wonderland in 3D tonight. It was better than I expected even though 3D is not my favourite way to watch a movie. I like that Tim Burton didn’t overdo the effects and I felt fairly immersed for the most part. It feels like 3D falls apart when the camera quickly pans across a screen. It gives the impression that the bits are rushing to catch up to the focal point of the scene. I’m not sure if this is a shortcoming of the technology or artistic creativity (that I just stomped on). Either way, I feel it ruins the illusion.

Besides the technology, the human actors were also very believable 🙂 – especially the Red Queen, the Mad Hatter, and Alice. The actress who plays Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is fantastic; she reminds me of a young Gwyneth Paltrow. I seem to be one of the few people I know who has never read the books but I am now tempted. Bye…going down the rabbit hole…be back soon.

earth hour sucks

Earth hour sucks because:

• people think that by turning off their lights for an hour they are now environmentalists.
• people think that they have done their part for the environment and can slack off for the rest of the year.
• people I know are planning a huge candlelight party with a large carni-BBQ with cold drinks and don’t understand why it’s ironic.
• the popularity of Earth Hour has made it into a trendy meaningless fad.
• I think I was correct about the impacts of token behaviour.
• I heard someone lecture a person in India about how they should be more ‘green’ like us Canadians.

Yeah, Earth Hour has some good points like communicating as a symbol of the changes we can make. So, I’ll do it anyway since I’ll probably be asleep.
🙂

spring wine and food

Happy Spring. I had a beautiful meal yesterday at Treadwell in Port Dalhousie in the Niagara region. I started with a truffle, soy-cream risotto; second was squash and mushroom gnocchi with sage, all washed down with Sauvignon Blanc from Nyarai Cellars. Dessert was vanilla ice cream, dolce de lecce ice cream, and chocolate sorbet with an espresso.

The highlight of the day was a tasting at Kacaba Vineyards were we tasted some of the best Ontario reds I have ever tasted. In fact they were some of the best reds that I have tasted. Two standouts were the 2007 Cabernet Franc Reserve and the 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve. 2007 was an outstanding year for Ontario, especially for the red grapes that got a chance to ripen fully for a change.

hot pot

A week ago I had an amazing Chinese hot pot dinner at a friend’s house. It started with an informal blind wine tasting of a couple of reds – a pinot noir (so obvious by the nose) and a syrah (that smelled like Bordeaux and tricked us all). Then the hot pot started with a pot of plain boiling water – this is new to me since I always started my hot pot with broth. We started by mixing our personal dipping sauce by choosing from XO sauce, soy, sesame oil, grated ginger and chili paste. Then it was on to poaching salmon, skate, prawns, scallops and squid. Soon followed by oysters, clams and crab. All this accompanied by some good white wines and unfiltered sake.

I was completely full by this point, but the show must go on. The broth was smelling wonderful – we added watercress, and then spinach, tofu and u-don noodles. We all finished with a wonderful bowl of soup. This was the very best hot pot meal that I ever had. Absolutely wonderful.

facebook: invasion of privacy

The story in my previous blog entry made me realize just how important (and scary) Facebook has become. The suspect’s Facebook profile photo is used in the article, as well as the victim’s friends have been scoured for news leads and to determine her family structure. It is the first example I have seen that has so blatantly invaded a victim’s privacy to gather information for a story. Another reason to be careful of what you post.

honour killing?

The story about the Belleville killings doesn’t fit most people’s limited definition of an honour killing, but it seems like the same thing to me – killing someone because they have caused you embarrassment or because you cannot control them.

I see domestic violence and killings as the same as ‘traditional’ honour violence and killings. Both are about control and manipulation by force. In North America, we tend to hide domestic violence as an internal family problem – “dirty laundry”. We should openly condemn every act of violence whether it is local and familiar or imported from far away places. To argue whether one or the other is culturally tolerated is meaningless – they both are. Now let’s do something about it! Listen. Speak. Act.

niqab

Quebec has made two recent rulings related to the niqāb – the body-covering garment worn by some Muslims. In one, a woman was barred from a free French language class unless she removed her niqāb; in the other, a woman wearing a niqāb was denied her demand that a woman take her medicare card picture.

In the first incident, the school insisted that the instructor must see the pupil’s face to correct pronunciation. Quebec’s Immigration minister has backed this decision after pressure from the Parti Quebecois for failing to protect Quebec values. The woman has now lodged a human-rights complaint. In the second incident, Quebec’s Human-Rights Commission ruled that

harper on women’s healthcare

Stephen Harper’s government said that Canada’s G8 submission on healthcare for women and children does not include any programs on contraception because contraception has nothing to do with women’s healthcare or mortality. No comment required.

Actually comment required. Why is our government so moronic? Allowing conservative religion to dictate policy is problematic at the best of times. Contraception has nothing to do with saving women’s lives? Child pregnancies, unwanted pregnancies, pregnancies from rape, non-stop pregnancies where her body does not have the chance to recover – these are only some of the issues that women face that have a direct relationship to contraception and mortality. Harper also has to stop muddling the contraception discussion with the much more volatile abortion issue.

Abortion is a very complex issue, where all sides can be debated strongly and fairly convincingly; but contraception? Really? In these times when we know better? This government is an embarrassment to Canada.

vanity

I find the focus on one’s physical beauty and the inevitable vanity and egotism quite irrational. Outer beauty is impermanent; focusing one’s energy on impermanent traits at the expense of developing more lasting inner beauty and peace seems counter-intuitive to me. Since examples of socially accepted beauty abound in the media and in our everyday lives, there is the false sense

international women’s day

Happy International Women’s Day. Like Earth Day, IWD is symbolic and has the potential to propagate the message, but also has potential to lull the senses into believing that all is well if we only mark the day with a celebration. Instead of just celebrating today, make sure that at the very least that the lives of the women in your life are full of love, respect and peace.