Spent a whirlwind five days in Edinburgh visiting my sister and some friends, tacking on a few side trips to the Isle of Arran and London. I am a slow, lazy, leisurely traveller, and even when I’m in a fantastic city that I love with so many things to do, I don’t get up very early in the morning. So my teeny little festival sampling was a scant five shows, and here are my mini-reviews!

Jason Byrne: The Byrne Supremacy ***** Aug 21
The first show I saw in the festival this year and definitely off to a great start – this guy was hilarious. Equal parts ridiculous, endearing, and simultaneously not offensive OR bland and “wholesome”. I imagine that is a hard line to straddle. Byrne just seems like a genuinely nice guy, and I’m of the opinion that a great comedian should be on the fringe of society somehow – Byrne seems to have suffered a lot as a child, and it’s given him a really good sense of humour. One of our party was pulled on stage for the “magic trick” which was AWESOME. If you get a chance to see this guy, do it.

Best of the Fest: ** Aug 22
Host: Adam Hills
Marcus Brigstocke
Sarah ?? (I can’t seem to find any information about this woman)
Reginald D Hunter
Alun Cochrane

I seriously doubt this particular sampling was the “best” of the fest. The woman, whose name I can’t even remember and who I can’t find any information about, was the best part of it. Marcus Brigstocke was especially disappointing, and himself, Hills and Cochrane all went on about how English people are miserable and London is a bleak place to live. Do I really need three comedians to tell me this in one night? Nobody was really top of their game this night. Good crowd though.

Manolibera ***1/2 Aug 23

This was an unexpected gem. Some friends and I went along after getting tickets at the half-price hut, and didn’t have the highest hopes as from the blurbs, this appeared to be the “best of a bad bunch”. But it turned out to be pretty cute and awesome. It uses manual animation, which I LOVE. Manual animation is when the artist uses an old-fashioned overhead projector and transparents with prepared drawings, and also does live drawing on the projector. There is an artist in Canada doing this (and who probably thinks he invented it) who I’ve seen twice in the last few years. He tells stories while putting up the animations. These guys are an Italian company and they mix the manual animations with live theatre; the actors do a sort of commedia dell’arte thing that is totally channeling Popeye and Olive Oyl, and their whole world is drawn by the cartoonist at the overhead projector. The first half was utterly charming and cute, but about halfway through I could’ve used more conflict or some kind of coherent narrative – things just kept trundling along, and then the show was over. A little bit underwhelming.

Lloyd Langford: Every Day I Have the Blues *** Aug 23
This guy’s pretty young as far as comedians go, so I’m giving him an extra half star than I’d otherwise – since most mid-20s guys I know who fancy themselves comedians are not as talented. There is something kind of innocent and endearing about Langford that makes you want to like him, even if his material isn’t the best comedy I’ve ever heard. He definitely has potential though and in a few years might be one to watch.

Tao: Samurai Magic Drumming ***** Aug 26

Ending my teeny festival stint with another 5-star show! This is a troupe of Japanese drummers, about seven dudes and three women, and they are all super talented. Their enthusiasm is infectious and they bring a lot of humour and playfulness to the music that is a joy to watch. It’s not all wall-to-wall drumming either, there is beautiful flute playing and strings. It doesn’t hurt that the dudes are super-built and hot as hell. I recommend this show wholeheartedly.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-k2etYCcig&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01&border=1]

Grade:
B? B-? I don’t really know how I feel about this movie.

What’s it About?
An alien (refugee?) spaceship hovers inoperable over Johannesburg for twenty years. The aliens are housed in the townships District 9, until the government hires private arms firm MNU to clear out the slum.

What’s it’s Bechdel Test Score?
Failure! 33%

What about Minorities?
This movie is all about racism. And it’s difficult to make a movie like that without showing your own unconscious racism. It was… it’s… ambitious (she says, with spread hands and a head tilt). I’m going to go and give it an A for Effort, but whether not it was successful in whatever it was trying to say is another thing altogether. More about this after the jump.

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Grade: B

EDIT: The more time goes on, the more I actually hate this movie. If I were writing this review now, I would give it an F. It’s a whiny, self-indulgent film, the story is quite clearly about the writer, who quite clearly thinks very highly of himself, and the main character is very unlikeable. I’m leaving this review up in its original version to show how one can be tricked into liking a movie by clever casting. I feel cheated out of my money now. (Though I still love you JGL.)

What’s it About?: Some lovesick hipster kids’ relationship hits the rocks.

What’s it Bechdel Test Score?: 33% Failure

What About Minorities?: Fffffffffailure. I guess this takes place in LA (I totally didn’t catch that!) and there are some in the background and at the office they work at, but yeah, this is definitely a movie about entitled white kids.

But it was a pretty good movie! Read on…

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Tonight I went along to CupcakeCamp Vancouver at Workspace in support of the Downtown Eastside Women’s Center.

There were dozens of cupcakes to be eaten and enjoyed, as well as games and prizes and various cupcake competitions! It was totally rad.

coca-cola float cupcake

The first cupcake we had when we arrived was the Coca-Cola Float Cupcake. Delicious! The icing was especially ice cream-y. We arrived a little late and missed the first round of cupcakes, I think, but we definitely got our fill!

More after the jump.

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A short one, since I didn’t have that many things to say about it.

What’s it’s Bechdel Test rating?
33%. Failure.
I wasn’t expecting great things about this movie in that regard, seeing as it takes place in the 1930s and is about gangsters. However, it’s a true story, and there were actually quite a few woman characters – and in the real world, those women would’ve talked to each other! But, one of the flaws of this movie was tooooo many characters. Two of the women actually do things that move the plot along however.

What About Minorities?
The main love interest is a half-French half-Native woman, and she’s a pretty cool character. She also doesn’t fall into a stereotype, which was refreshing, and she has one of my favourite lines: “My mother was a Menominee Indian, most men don’t like that.” However, she was played by French actress Marion Cotillard, who is great, but I’m pretty sure is not half-Native. Knowing plenty of Native actors, some of which are biracial or mixed, some of which are not, I was a little saddened to see a white actress play a Native character.
Especially since you have biracial actor Stephen Graham (a personal favourite), playing a white character. In both cases, not doing too much to increase visibility of minorities, even though you have minority actors and minority characters. This is one of the ways where minorities get swallowed up – they are in film as characters, but are played by whites. Or, they act in film, but can pass as white and play white characters. It gets frustrating.

What’s right with it?

All the acting was great. I felt the performances were the strongest part of this film. Marion Cotillard, despite being the wrong race, acted her face off. She was excellent in it, as was Branka Katic, who had a small but important role, and was really good in it.

And you know who else was good in it? Stephen Graham! He was the little sidekick guy in Snatch, ages and ages ago (ten years?!). He’s brutal in this movie. He plays Baby Faced Nelson, who loves shooting people and is a frickin’ psychopath. He was very sadly underutilized. He was in far fewer scenes than I thought he would be. The movie was, obviously, mostly about John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), but Baby Faced Nelson was a totally interesting character too, and I had more fun watching Stephen Graham than Depp.

What’s wrong with it?

I actually found this film a little lifeless and boring. It dragged on way too long, and never really caught my attention, except for the eye-rattling tommy-gun battles. That might just be personal preference though – I’m not a huge fan of gangster movies, and a lot of times with period pieces I just find myself musing about how much harder everything must’ve been back then. There wasn’t anything particular in this film that really caught my attention.

There were too many characters, which is tricky in true stories because, well, there were a lot of people there. But it ended up stretching the story over all these characters, and not giving us enough insight into any of them to really care that much. I actually can’t think of too many things to say about this movie, except that I can imagine people who are really into history, or gangsters, or who are suckers for romances (even through the romance isn’t that big in the story, despite some reviews saying it is) would enjoy it a lot. I thought it was just boring, and nothing to write home about.