A Slow Loook at Growing Old

   'Still Mine'. Starring Genevieve Bujold and James Cromwell. Directed by Michael McGowan.

     "There's dance in the old dame yet," an old woman said about 40 years ago. This became the title of a book on old age. But for Irene(Genevieve Bujold), there's not much left energy left for dancing. She and her husband of many years (James Cromwell) live in a 2,000 acre farm in rural New Brunswick.
      "She's fine," Craig says about his wife. But Irene's not fine. She's slowly losing her mind, perhaps to Alzheimer's. Craig meanwhile tries to build a new house for them both.
      But the 80 year-old Craig runs head on into the new rules and regulations that govern the building code. Unlike the recent French film 'Amour', this film is a happy film. This couple laugh together, kiss, make love and reminisce about the past.
   Director Michael McGowan gives us a slowly paced film of ageing and its downsides. Sometimes the film moves too slowly. But the film is also full of stark beautiful images of rural New Brunswick, courtesy of the wonderful photography of Brendan Stacey.
     "Atlantic Canada is plagued by a culture of defeatism," Prime Minister Stephen Harper once said in effect. But there's no defeatism in this film. It's a story of a couple triumphing over the problems of ageing, as death lurks in the background.

'The Great Gatsby' Was Too Over The Top

   "The Great Gatsby'. Starring Leonardo Di Caprio, Toby Maguire and Carey Mulligan. Directed by Buz Luhrmann.


       "The rich are different from us," novelist F.Scott Fitzgerald once told his long time rival Ernest Hemingway. "Yes," Hemingway is supposed to have replied. "They have more money."
     Director Buz Luhrmann is the sixth director to create a film version of Fitzgerald's slim 1920's novel. Here in 3-D he highlights the moneyed people of the 1920's, and in many ways they don't differ from us cash-strapped people at all. Though of course, they're way way richer.
     Nick Carroway (Toby Maguire), comes to 1920's New York City seeking fame and fortune. He ends up trading bonds on Wall Street. He lives next door to the mysterious ultra-rich Jay Gatsby, played by Leonardo Di Caprio. Di Caprio looks more and more like the young Orson Welles, whose 1940's film 'Citizen Kane' was another meditation on wealth and power.
     Then there's the blonde Daisy (Carey Mulligan) Carroway's cousin, who's married to an insensitive multimillionaire. But Gatsby adores Daisy whom he met five years ago. He still wants her.
    Click here for romance, sex, endless parties, dozens of servants, many types of musical sound tracks,
 and luxurious houses that dwarf any megamansion in Vancouver. This is Buz Luhrmann's idea of Fitzgerald's novel.
     But tragedy and pain lurk behind this American success story. Gatsby's yellow Duesenberg car roars past coalfields where coal encrusted miners toil from dawn to dusk, under the all seeing gaze of an eye-filled billboard.
    And then there's Gatsby himself, as seen in hindsight by Carroway who's now a reformed alcoholic. Gatsby's real name is James Gatz. "His parents were dirt poor farmers from North Dakota," Carroway tells us about Gatsby, who's heading for disaster.
  'The Great Gatsby' is two and a half hours of bloated fun and games, and then tragedy. It works alright, but for me it was way overdone.But if you want a mega-project of a film, then this is surely the flick for you.