Social Housing at Olympic Village: a third option

On Friday November 27, the Vancouver Courier had a story headlined "City Hall to soon decide about Olympic Village social housing". While I was called by the reporter, the highly respected Cheryl Rossi, my comments and suggestions didn't make it into the story that mentioned three possible scenarios, none of which I agree with. They were:

• selling the units as market housing;
• keeping the units as social housing, as intended; and
• selling the units as market rental housing.

I believe there is a much better solution, based on the affordable housing model created for the Verdant project at UniverCity, about which I have written before. I briefly describe it in the following Letter to the Editor, that I have sent off and am printing below:

I enjoyed reading Cheryl Rossi's column and would like to offer a few observations. I agree with Councillor Woodsworth that it would be 'highly inequitable' for the Olympic Village development to be just for the wealthy. However, it is not necessary to keep all 252 units as traditional 'social housing' in order to ensure a broader social mix. The city could achieve this by offering some or all of these units for sale as affordable ownership housing at prices that would cover its development costs. Priority could be given to firefighters, police officers, Vancouver school teachers and others who would like to live close to where they work. To avoid competition with Millennium's market units, these units could be sold as leasehold, rather than freehold. The city could also impose conditions to ensure the units remain affordable over time. It could also require a 'right of first refusal' whenever the units come back on the market so that they could be bought back and used as future social housing, once the city's financial situation at Southeast False Creek improves. While I would not normally advocate this position, the reality is that depending on how much Millennium can pay for the land from the sale of the market units, the city could still be facing a loss of tens of millions of dollars, or more, on the first phase of SEFC. For this reason, the responsible position is to cut our losses, knowing that new social housing can be built on adjacent sites and many of these units could revert to social housing in the future.

While there are many current civic issues about which I feel quite strongly, this is one subject about which I feel quite passionately. I hate the thought of the Property Endowment Fund losing tens of millions of dollars, because of decisions made in the past, and I therefore hope others will begin to appreciate that there are more than two options for the future of the social housing units at Olympic Village. This option could achieve a social mix, and potentially save the city millions of dollars.

The Decade List: Tony Manero (2008)

Tony Manero – d. Pablo Larraín

[I wrote about this earlier this summer, so here's a slightly edited version of that.]

Like Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle and Man Bites Dog’s “Ben,” Pablo Larraín's Tony Manero offers a new addition to the league of cinema's most fascinatingly maladaptive sociopaths with Raúl Peralta (Alfredo Castro). Set in Chile during Pinochet's oppressive reign over the country during the late 1970s, Larraín takes an unflinching look at his nation's history through Raúl, who'd prefer others to call him Tony Manero, better known as John Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever. While bearing some resemblance to Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely, the two films part ways quickly as Raúl's celebrity projection turns rapidly grim when we discover that he also brutally murders innocent people without a glimpse of reservation.

More than Taxi Driver, to which it shares a political leaning, Tony Manero recalls some of Michael Haneke's notable works. Like a hybrid of Funny Games' Paul (Arno Frisch) and The Piano Teacher's Erika (Isabelle Huppert), Raúl incorporates Erika's appalling acts of sadism with Paul's absence of remorse. He's not inhuman as much as he's beyond it, a product of the devastating reality of his world and Hollywood's endless dream-pushing.

I resist calling Tony Manero a satire or even a dark comedy as, like The Piano Teacher, its moments of rabid cruelty only spark laughter as a relief from the unshakeable dread the film creates and the repugnance that it instills (though I’m fine if you want to make a correlation between Saturday Night Fever and the downfall of Chilean society). In one of the film's most memorably ghastly scenes, the local theatre's change of attraction from Saturday Night Fever to another Travolta vehicle Grease propels Raúl to crush the elderly projectionist's skull inside the projection booth.

While the underlying idea in Tony Manero rings familiar on a couple of levels, those associations never infiltrate the hypnosis Larraín and Castro, who co-wrote the screenplay, place the audience under. Whether it's mortification or a seedy desire to where the film could possibly be headed, there's something thoroughly transfixing about Tony Manero, which sustains its foreboding uneasiness to its final, astonishing sequence.

With: Alfredo Castro, Paolo Lattus, Héctor Morales, Amparo Noguera, Elsa Poblete
Screenplay: Alfredo Castro, Mateo Iribarren, Pablo Larraín
Cinematography: Sergio Armstrong
Country of Origin: Chile/Brazil
US Distributor: Lorber Films

Premiere: 17 May 2008 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 29 September 2008 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: Best Film, Best Actor – Alfredo Castro, FIPRESCI Prize (Torino Film Festival)

Nicholas Ray's Final Film to Be Restored; Plus More Awards, UPDATED with Gotham Winners

Via Variety, Nicholas Ray's final (solo-directed, feature) film We Can't Go Home Again, a little-seen "experimental" film he made with his wife Susan and a group of his film students at the time, will undergo a $500,000 restoration funded by the Nicholas Ray Foundation with the Venice Film Festival. The restoration will be supervised by Susan and will bow at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, "to mark the centennial of Ray's birth." Variety also says: "The Ray celebration will include a series of DVDs, an installation, an educational film titled "Nicholas Ray Master Class" and an interactive website." What that means, I have no clue, especially as it relates to the number of Ray films still MIA on DVD in the US: 55 Days at Peking, Johnny Guitar, Bigger Than Life (which is coming from Criterion, reportedly), Born to Be Bad, Hot Blood, Knock on Any Door, The Lusty Men, Run for Cover, The Savage Innocents, Wind Across the Everglades, A Woman's Secret, et al. For those curious, there are a number of clips from We Can't Go Home Again in Wim Wenders' Lightning Over Water, aka Nick's Movie.

Now for some awards from around the world, both national and festival related. Warwick Thornton's Samson and Delilah, which was awarded the Caméra d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, took the top prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, held on 26 November. It's also Australia's official submission in the Foreign Oscar competition. Sergei Dvortsevoy's Tulpan from Kazakhstan was the Best Picture winner last year. The rest of the awards are below:

Best Feature Film: Samson and Delilah, d. Warwick Thornton, Australia
Jury Grand Prize (tie): The Time That Remains, d. Elia Suleiman, Palestine/France/Italy/Belgium/UK; About Elly, d. Asghar Farhadi, Iran
Best Actor: Masahiro Motoki - Departures
Best Actress: Kim Hye-ja - Mother
Best Director: Lu Chuan - City of Life and Death
Best Cinematography: Cao Yu - City of Life and Death
Best Screenplay: Asghar Farhadi - About Elly
Best Documentary: Defamation, d. Yoav Shamir, Israel/Denmark/USA/Austria
Best Animated Feature: Mary and Max, d. Adam Elliot, Australia
Best Children's Feature: A Brand New Life, d. Ounie Lecomte, South Korea/France

Taiwan's Oscar submission, Leon Dai's No puedo vivir sin ti [Not Without You], was the big winner at the Golden Horse Awards, Taiwan's biggest annual award ceremony. Any film, whether from Taiwan, Hong Kong or China, primarily in Chinese is eligible. As the Film Experience Blog reported, Maggie Cheung made a rare appearance to deliver the ceremony's top award. Last year's Best Picture was awarded to Peter Chan's The Warlords (which Magnolia should be releasing soon in the US). The Awards are below:

Best Film: No puedo vivir sin ti, d. Leon Dai, Taiwan
Best Director: Leon Dai - No puedo vivir sin ti
Best Actor: (tie) Nick Cheung - The Beast Stalker; Huang Bo - Cow
Best Actress: Li Bingbing - The Message
Best Supporting Actor: Wang Xueqi - Forever Enthralled
Best Supporting Actress: Kara Hui - At the End of Daybreak
Best Documentary: KJ: Music and Life, d. Cheung King-wai, Hong Kong
Best Cinematography: Cao Yu - City of Life and Death
Best Action Choreography: Sammo Hung - Ip Man
Best Art Direction: Lee Tian-jue, Patrick Dechesne, Alain-Pascal Housiaux - Visage [Face]
Best Original Screenplay: Chen Wen-pin, Leon Dai - No puedo vivir sin ti
Best Adapted Screenplay: Guan Hu - Cow
Best Original Score: Dou Wei, Bi Xiaodi - The Equation of Love and Death

The 20th Annual Stockholm Film Festival finished up today, awarding Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth its top prize; Courteney Hunt's Frozen River claimed that title last year. On a side note, I originally reported that Dogtooth would be representing Greece for the Foreign Oscar category, but that apparently was (not surprising considering its subject matter) false. Instead, Adonis Lykouresis' Slaves in their Bonds was named Greece's official selection. About the prizes below, the Telia Film Award is a newly created award for films without local distribution. Read more about it here. Awards below:

Best Film: Dogtooth, d. Yorgos Lanthimos, Greece
Best First Film: Sin Nombre, d. Cary Fukunaga, Mexico/USA
Best Actress: Mo'Nique - Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Best Actor: Edgar Flores - Sin Nombre
Best Screenplay: Eran Creevy - Shifty
Best Cinematography: Christophe Beaucarne - Mr. Nobody
Jameson Film Music Award: Krister Linder - Metropia
Telia Film Award: Miss Kicki, d. Håkon Liu, Sweden/Taiwan
FIPRESCI Prize: Sin Nombre
FIPRESCI Honorable Mention: Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, d. Lee Daniels, USA

I was so busy with the film festival, I didn't even get around to posting the Documentary Short-list for the 2010 Academy Awards. It's now down to 15, with a number of glaring snubs from Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story (though I've heard its omission is justified), James Toback's Tyson, Ondi Timoner's We Live in Public, R.J. Cutler's The September Issue and Kimberly Reed's Prodigal Sons. Someone on another site mentioned Terence Davies' Of Time and the City, but I'm never really sure which films are eligible in terms of year with the Documentary category. The 15 are below:

- The Beaches of Agnès [Les plages d'Agnès], d. Agnès Varda, France
- Burma VJ, d. Anders Ostergaard, Denmark
- The Cove, d. Louie Psihoyos, USA
- Every Little Step, d. Adam del Deo, James D. Stern, USA
- Facing Ali, d. Pete McCormack, USA/Canada
- Food, Inc., d. Robert Kenner, USA
- Garbage Dreams, d. Mai Iskander, USA
- Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders, d. Mark N. Hopkins, USA
- The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, d. Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith, USA
- Mugabe and the White African, d. Lucy Bailey, Andrew Thompson, UK
- Sergio, d. Greg Barker, USA
- Soundtrack for a Revolution, d. Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman, USA/France/UK
- Under Our Skin, d. Andy Abrahams Wilson, USA
- Valentino: The Last Emperor, d. Matt Tyrnauer, USA
- Which Way Home, d. Rebecca Cammisa, USA

Cinema Eye also announced their nominees for achievements in non-fiction cinema. The complete list of nominees can be found on their website (last year, Man on Wire took the top honors), but here are the 5 listed for Outstanding Achievement in Non-Fiction Feature Filmmaking:

- Burma VJ, d. Anders Ostergaard, Denmark
- The Cove, d. Louie Psihoyos, USA
- Food, Inc., d. Robert Kenner, USA
- Loot, d. Darius Marder, USA
- October Country, d. Michael Palmieri, Donal Mosher, USA

And, finally, the Gotham Awards will have their ceremony tomorrow in New York City. The Gotham Awards, an extension of the Independent Film Project, recognize the achievements in "independent cinema." I remember a lot of confused reactions to some of their omissions and inclusions when the nominees were announced in October. Courteney Hunt's Frozen River won the Best Picture last year. So, since I didn't post it previously, here are the nominees in the big categories: [UPDATED: The winners are in red; I didn't think a separate blog post was necessary to name them]

Best Feature Film

Amreeka, d. Cherein Dabis, USA/Canada
Big Fan, d. Robert Siegel, USA
The Hurt Locker, d. Kathryn Bigelow, USA
The Maid [La nana], d. Sebastián Silva, Chile/Mexico
A Serious Man, d. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, USA

Best Documentary

Food, Inc., d. Robert Kenner, USA
Good Hair, d. Jeff Stilson, USA
My Neighbor My Killer [Mon voisin, mon tueur], d. Anne Aghion, France/USA
Paradise, d. Michael Almereyda, USA
Tyson, d. James Toback, USA

Breakthrough Director

Cruz Angeles - Don't Let Me Drown
Frazer Bradshaw - Everything Strange and New
Noah Buschel - The Missing Person
Derick Martini - Lymelife
Robert Siegel - Big Fan

Breakthrough Actor

Ben Foster - The Messenger
Patton Oswalt - Big Fan
Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker
Catalina Saavedra - The Maid
Souleymane Sy Savane - Goodbye Solo

Best Ensemble Performance

Adventureland - Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Kristin Wiig, Bill Hader, Ryan Reynolds
Cold Souls - Paul Giamatti, Dina Korzun, Emily Watson, Katheryn Winnick, David Strathairn
The Hurt Locker - Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, David Morse, Evangeline Lilly
A Serious Man - Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed
Sugar - Algenis Perez Soto, Rayniel Rufino, Michael Gaston, Andre Holland, Ann Whitney, Richard Bull, Ellary Porterfield, Jaime Tirelli

Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You

Everything Strange and New, d. Frazer Bradshaw, USA
Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, d. Damien Chazelle, USA
October Country, d. Michael Palmieri, Donal Mosher, USA
You Wont Miss Me, d. Ry Russo-Young, USA
Zero Bridge, d. Tariq Tapa, India/USA

Lexicon of housing and real estate

The following story appeared in today's Vancouver Sun. Thank you to Westcoast Homes section head Mike Sasges and editor Barbara Gunn for its placement and thoughtful editing.

An introductory lesson that distinguishes old, new and misused residential tenures and types.

Michael Geller, Special to the Sun: Published November 28, 2009

The past, present and future of Public Housing is evident at the Little Mountain Public Housing Project, one of about 85 built by CMHC since World War II. Photo by Stuart Davis, Vancouver Sun.

Many years ago, while planning the transformation of BC Packers' waterfront lands in Steveston, I made the mistake of trying to explain "land residuals" to BC Packers executives. I will always remember president J. Bruce Buchanan taking me aside and explaining that in his company, residuals had a very different meaning. Anyone who has ever visited a fish packing plant will know what he meant.

Today, I often hear people improperly using terminology related to housing and real estate, sometimes with unfortunate results.

Recently, I attended a panel discussion at the Dunbar Residents Association's annual general meeting. I was impressed with the high quality of panelists and the general discussion, but at one point an audience member expressed disapproval of a nearby housing proposal because the developer had promised seniors' housing, and the project was really condominiums.

She did not seem to appreciate that seniors' housing could mean one of many things, and that a condominium is simply a form of tenure.

At another event, a respected housing analyst talked about the market demand for townhouses and condominiums. Again, a townhouse is a form of development, whereas a condominium is, yes, a form of tenure.

In both cases, I knew what the speakers were trying to say. To the Dunbar resident, seniors' housing meant rental housing, or perhaps a care facility. In the housing analyst's mind, condominiums were apartments. But as we all know, not all condominiums are apartments.

It will be increasingly important to understand housing terminology in the future, since developers will be offering more options, such as single-family condominium developments and "fee-simple" townhouses. (The latter was pioneered in Vancouver by former city councillor Art Cowie, who sadly passed away recently.)

We can also expect more co-housing, which offers different forms of housing with a higher provision of shared amenities, and alternative tenure options, such as life-lease and shared-equity.

With increased public discussion on whether the housing at the Olympic Village should be social housing or market housing, or whether a seniors' project can be a condominium, I thought it might be helpful to review other types of housing terminology from yesterday and today.

Last month, I was invited to teach a class at SFU on the history of government-assisted housing. I spoke about the significant number of programs over the past 60 years, many with now-forgotten acronyms.

Government-subsidized housing in Canada was initiated after the Second World War by the then-Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC. Veterans' housing and public housing assisted those who could not afford to buy or rent on the open market. Veterans' projects were built along Fourth Avenue and Broadway in Kitsilano, and in New Westminster.

Some of Vancouver's early public housing projects included Little Mountain, Skeena Terrace, Raymur Place and Orchard Park. Today, there are about 85 public-housing projects around B.C. built by CMHC and now managed by B.C. Housing. Most are in need of renovation or regeneration. However, if the controversial redevelopment of the Little Mountain social housing complex by the province and the city is any indication, this will have to be managed with much more thought and care.

In the 1970s, the federal government transferred responsibility for the delivery and management of public housing to other levels of government and specially formed non-profit groups and charitable organizations. New National Housing Act rental social housing projects were built by organizations such as the Lions Club, Kiwanis, the Society for Christian Care of the Elderly and numerous ethnic-based societies.

Organizations such as Columbia Housing took advantage of the new National Housing Act's non-profit co-operative housing program and oversaw the creation of dozens of projects. Unlike New York's Park Avenue co-ops, and earlier Vancouver co-ops, however, the residents of these new projects have not enjoyed equity appreciation. But they have enjoyed security of tenure and a communal co-operative lifestyle.

One of my favourite 1970s programs was the Assisted Home Ownership Program -- or AHOP -- that provided incentives to developers building a home that sold for $47,000 or less. Some purchasers of single-family homes had to hang their own closet doors, since they did not come with the units. But their homes are worth considerably more today.

Recently, the City of Vancouver announced the Short Term Incentive Rental program, or STIR, to encourage construction of market rental units. While this is a first for Vancouver, there have been numerous federal rental programs: Limited Dividend, Assisted Rental Program, Canada Rental Supply Program, and the Multi-unit Residential Program. How can we forget MURBs?

When it comes to seniors' housing, there has been private and non-profit independent living, personal care, intermediate care, extended care, congregate housing, assisted living, and most recently, supportive housing. While nearly all has been rental, some condominium ownership projects have been built in North America as both independent living and care facilities.

Another seniors' tenure option is life lease. One excellent example in Vancouver is the Performing Arts Lodge at Bayshore Gardens near Coal Harbour, which allows seniors to purchase an apartment at a reduced price on the understanding that when they move out, their initial payment will be returned, but without any increase.

A once-popular U.S. life-lease program offered seniors the right to purchase at a reduced price, based on their age, and remain until their death on the understanding that their estate would receive nothing back. This worked for many years until residents started to live longer in their attractive and supportive environments and "beat the annuity tables."

Today an increasing number of American projects offer an innovative new tenure option for seniors. It is called rental!

Michael Geller is an architect, planner, developer and adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University. From 1972 to 1981, he worked for the CMHC, overseeing the development of thousands of government-assisted housing units across Canada. He can be reached at geller@sfu.ca

What is a Fee-Simple Rowhouse?

As a result of the recent passing of Art Cowie, and many references to his efforts to promote 'fee-simple rowhousing' a number of people have asked me to define this term. The following is a brief explanation, along with a story I found on-line about a project in Chicago.

Fee simple is a legal phrase that indicates the highest form of property ownership. 'Fee' comes from the word fiefdom, which means the legal rights in land. 'Simple' in this case, means without constraints. So, fee-simple ownership of property means the absolute and unqualified legal title to the land and any permanent buildings on it; no one else has any claim to the property at all. It is the most common form of ownership.

Almost all new rowhouses sold in British Columbia are NOT fee-simple. Instead, they are strata-titled, and the purchasers are members of a condominium association. This is because while they own most of their unit outright, the exterior walls, grounds, parking and driveways are usually owned in common.

There are exceptions. Thirty years ago, a number of fee-simple rowhouse developments were built in Burnaby and Coquitlam. They are still around. More recently, Parklane Homes, which has been interested in this form of housing for a number of years, built a 'fee-simple' rowhouse development in Langley known as Bedford Landing. Since the homes had a shared wall, there was a Party Wall Agreement. Since some of the pipes connecting to water and sewer crossed over different properties, there was a Services Easement Agreement.

To prevent someone from painting his or her portion of the row of housing bright yellow, there were also Design Guidelines registered on title. I compliment Ben Taddai of Parklane for his creativity and persistence in following through on this project.

Aragon Homes, another innovative development company, also built a fee simple rowhouse development as part of its Port Royal development in Queensborough, New Westminster. While I haven't checked the title, I assume that there were similar agreements in place there as well.

There are a few reasons why we have not seen more fee-simple row house developments. Firstly, they cost more than a conventional rowhouse complex. Instead of one hook-up to sewer and water, there are many. There are also additional costs associated with the party wall construction. Another key reason is their legality. In order for such developments to succeed, the party wall agreement needs to run with the land in perpetuity. The City of Vancouver and other jurisdictions have taken the position that this is not currently possible under current Land Title Act legislation.

As a result, Councillor Suzanne Anton, a proponent of innovative housing, and a longtime friend of Art Cowie is trying to get the province to amend this legislation to make it easier to build such housing in the future. When the Act is amended, she hopes it will be known as 'Cowie's Bill'.

The following is excerpted from a Chicagoan's experience living in a fee-simple townhouse complex. It is interesting in that notwithstanding the advantages of not being part of a legal association, his complex decided to create an association! Read on...

In a fee-simple rowhouse or townhouse, there is nothing that is owned by the association. The owners own their roof, their windows, the land under and around their townhouse. That means the individual owners are responsible for taking care of any lawn, painting the outside, fixing leaks in the roof, and shoveling the snow.

In my case, I live in a courtyard townhouse. There are two rows of homes with a beautiful little courtyard filled with trees and flowers (or mounds of snow) between them. A sidewalk runs down the exact middle. Only the end units face the street. I own, and am responsible for, the part of the courtyard that extends from my front door to the middle of the sidewalk. I have to pay for and plant the flowers. I have to cut my grass. I have to clean my gutters. I have to rake the leaves that fall on my bit of grass.

The only thing that I share with anyone are the walls dividing my home from the homes on either side of mine. If something were to poke a hole in either of those walls, both my neighbor and I would have to pay to have it fixed. If the damage is just on my side of the wall…it’s my problem.

Luckily, this complex of townhouses decided that it was nuts for each person to mow their own 10 foot x 10 foot bit of grass, shovel half of the side walk, and clean only their gutters. About 20 years ago, well before I bought here, they formed a loose association. We all pay a very small assessment so we can hire someone to do all these odd jobs that impact all of us. In our case, the association owns nothing. It just exists to buy services that all of us need and benefit from. This is why I was at the meeting last night—looking at expenses.

What Are The Pros & Cons of a Fee-Simple Townhouse?

The first pro you will notice is that there are no assessments. This, in my opinion, is a very big advantage. It means that you can pay more for the home. When you are looking to buy and you know you can spend $1,000 a month, that whole $1,000 can go toward your mortgage. None of your monthly payment is going toward an assessment. The added benefit is that all of the interest on a mortgage payment is tax deductible where an assessment payment is not.

The other pro that springs to my mind is the feeling of independence you have versus a standard condo. You don’t have to worry about what the neighbors think; they can’t make a rule about the size of your dog or how you empty your garbage.

The cons are just the other side of the same coin: you can’t control your neighbors in any way. So, if your next door neighbor—the person you share one wall with—decides to paint their house black with lime green accents, there’s not a thing you can do. If they decide to dig up their bit of grass and replace it with a spongy-floored play area for their kids, your hands are tied.

Geller's Note: Well, not exactly. As I noted above it is possible to put in place Design Guidelines to help control the aesthetics of the complex. For this and other reasons, while this housing form and tenue may not be for everyone, it might well serve those who don't want to live in a conventional single family home, or a 'shared ownership' rowhouse complex.

bakrid sms, bakrid greetings, bakrid messages, bakrid wishes, bakrid 2009

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Bakrid 2009 wishes or Bakrid sms or Bakrid greetings or Bakrid messages or Bakrid scraps on the occasion of Bakrid 2009 festival, The feast of sacrifice which you can send and wish your beloved ones and family members with a nice and great Bakrid messages or Bakrid 2009 wishes or Bakrid sms or Bakrid greetings or Bakrid scraps is given for you from us wishing you a Happy Bakrid 2009.

About Bakrid Festival :

The feast of sacrifice, Idul-Adha, in India pronounced Idul Azha and popularly known as Baqri Id or Bakrid, is celebrated on the tenth day of the month Dhu’l Hijja. It is a sacrifice made by the pilgrims and the ceremonise are performed as a part of the great pilgrimage. This fastival is celebrated by all Muslims all over the world. It is a joyous occassion and friends and families exchange good wishes to one another.

Here are some nice Bakrid messages and SMS:

Sunhari Dhup Barsat ke Bad,
thodi Si Hushi Har Bat ke Bad,
Usi Tarah Ho Mubarak App Ko
Ye Nayi Subah Kal rat Ke Bad
“Happy BAKRID day”

____________________
Aaj Khuda ki hum par ho Meharbani,
Karde maf hum logo ki sare Naformani,
Eid Ka din aj aao milka kare yahi wada,
Khuda ka hi raho mai hum chalange sada.
Sare Musalman ko Bakrid Mubarak
_______________________
Wish you ” HAPPY BAKRID “ 2009?
In this holy day, I wish all your dreams comes true
_______________________
This Comes to your way
With warmest thoughts
And happy wishes too…
To hope your Eid day will be
As wonderful as you
_______________________
Wishing you an Eid that brings
With it the love and protection of
Allah to Stay…
Always!
BAKRID MUBARAK

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The Decade List: La mujer sin cabeza (2008)

La mujer sin cabeza [The Headless Woman] – dir. Lucrecia Martel

Of all of the decade’s notable directorial debuts, no other director found their footing as succinctly and skillfully as Lucrecia Martel, who managed to craft one of the striking masterpieces latter part of the ‘00s with her third film, The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza]. Building upon the worlds of both La ciénaga and La niña santa, Martel molds The Headless Woman around a central mystery. Did bottle-blonde, affluent dentist Véro (María Onetto, brilliant in an extremely challenging role) run over and kill someone on an empty road? In a moment of panic, she drives away from the accident where something, whether a dog or a person, was fatally hit. It depends on who you ask what the answer to the cryptic puzzle is, but most will agree, nothing about The Headless Woman can be deduced in simple terms.

Martel’s films thrive on the peripheral; she spends no time introducing characters, all of whom seem to know or have blood relations to the those upon which she focuses and seem to flutter in and out during the course of her films. It’s a refreshing, if frequently disorienting, technique, and one she puts to masterful use in The Headless Woman. Following the accident, Véro suffers a strange bout of amnesia as she disassociates herself from the crash. After a visit to the hospital, she hides away in a hotel, not unlike La niña santa, which is owned by either one of her family members or close friends (forgive me for not remembering a lot of the factual details, even though I did just watch the film again this past Sunday).

It becomes apparent that what Véro is suffering isn’t just fleeting panic but something more psychologically severe during the scene where she walks into her place of work and sits herself down in the waiting room, clearly unaware of her own profession or why she’s even there. Martel gives us very few details about Véro before the crash, which happens within the first fifteen minutes of the film, placing the audience on the same level as the protagonist, blind to almost everything that’s come before the accident and just as startled at everything that follows. Véro’s actions following the crash seem mechanical; she knows which hotel to go to and which house is hers, but she lacks recognition of the people around her and the circumstances of her own life. At the hotel, she runs into Juan Manuel (Daniel Genoud), a face she recognizes, and has sex with him. It’s later revealed that Juan Manuel is the husband of Josefina (Claudia Cantero), who’s either Véro’s sister or her cousin (no review or person I talked to seemed to be really sure about which). Though the question as to whether the two were partaking in an ongoing affair or if it happened just the one night is never directly answered, Martel tells us all we need to know when Véro, then convinced she did in fact kill someone that day, and Juan Manuel face one another again at her house.

The emphasis on the peripheral in The Headless Woman is where Martel’s strength as a filmmaker reveals itself even more dynamically than in her previous efforts (after La niña santa, The Headless Woman is the second of her films that Pedro and Augustín Almodóvar co-produced). When used in the realm of characterization, the film shows a peculiar, surprising sense of humor. From Véro’s crazy tía Lala (María Vaner) who sees ghosts and Josefina’s hepatitis-ridden daughter Candita (the wonderful Inés Efron of XXY) who discloses her crush on Véro by groping her and stating at one point, “love letters are to be answered or returned,” the actual world of The Headless Woman is a bizarre one, even outside of Véro’s mental distress. The combined efforts of cinematographer Bárbara Álvarez (who also shot Rodrigo Moreno’s wonderful El custodio) and the entire sound department rival Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men in technical flawlessness and innovation.

(While I hate to keep harping on this particular subject, especially as I’ve argued against it many times before, it’s worth noting that I don’t think I could truly appreciate the film’s technical prowess until seeing it projected on the big screen, where it swallowed me whole. It probably also helped that I was seeing it for the second time, after watching it at home months prior. But without being encompassed by the film in a theatre, committing one’s self to it without the leisure of home viewing, The Headless Woman loses some of its power. Note also how several critics have admitted to not really "getting" what Martel was up to and changing their tune after seeing it a second time.)

Truly though, it’s the way Martel addresses the film’s central mystery that makes The Headless Woman such an uncompromising and incandescent film. The details surrounding the disappearance of a child (more than likely one of the boys we see running around the canal in the opening scene), a block in the canal after the big rainstorm that arrives just after the accident and Candita’s offhand mention of a murder are all revealed almost extrinsically. For those familiar with Martel’s work though, nothing can truly be described as extrinsic in her films. In a certain light, the elements described above nearly create a secondary narrative, but as Martel situates the film entirely in Véro’s perspective, they cannot be seen as mere red herrings. I think if you pay attention to not only the details but the way in which the men in Véro’s life—her husband Marcos (César Bordón), her brother Marcelo (Guillermo Arengo) and Juan Manuel—interact with her, there is an answer to what happened on the road that day. Add that to Josefina’s proclamation that all the women of their family eventually succumb to madness, recognize the division of class in the film and The Headless Woman becomes less opaque than it originally appears.

While certainly a difficult film to market, the fact that it took The Headless Woman over a year to make it to the United States after premiering at Cannes in 2008 can best be attributed to reported cat-calls and boos it received at the premiere. The film doesn’t have the beneficial shock factor of something like Antichrist, which was picked up for US distribution immediately, and it wasn’t until I saw the film top IndieWire’s poll of the best undistributed films of 2008 did I realize the jeers it received at Cannes were as unjustified as they tend to be at that particular festival. Think of them then as a nod to the reception Michelangelo Antonioni’s now classic L’avventura, which also surrounds a mystery without an expected resolution, received in 1960. For the perceptive viewer (or one that’s given the film more than one sitting), The Headless Woman is utterly brilliant filmmaking, the sort that will hopefully fuck with and perplex audiences for decades to come.

With: María Onetto, Claudia Cantero, César Bordón, Inés Efron, Daniel Genoud, Guillermo Arengo, María Vaner, Alicia Muxo, Pía Uribelarrea
Screenplay: Lucrecia Martel
Cinematography: Bárbara Álvarez
Country of Origin: Argentina/France/Italy/Spain
US Distributor: Strand Releasing

Premiere: 21 May 2008 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 6 October 2008 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: FIPRESCI Prize (Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival)

Humpin' Around

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire - d. Lee Daniels - 2009 - USA - Lionsgate

There's so little time left in the year for me to spend a whole lot of time writing about films that I don't like, but I need to flush my feelings for Lee Daniels' Precious out in some form. When my friend Tom sent me a Netflix note saying, "God help me, I partially agree with Armond White," I couldn't help but share his sentiment. Despite the editorial errors (really, how does giving the wrong title for a director's previous film, Shadowboxer not Shadowboxing, get past the NY Press' editor?) and including Marci X, Little Man, Mr. 3000 and Norbit (!!) in all seriousness as "excellent recent films with black themes," White sort of nails the self-loathing that runs through all of Precious, from its ludicrous fantasy sequences--the worst of which placing Precious (Gabourney Sidibe) and her mother (Mo'Nique) in a scene from Vittorio De Sica's Two Women as they watch it on television, despite the fact that Precious is barely literate--to its onslaught of racial stereotypes.

I am glad, however, that Lee Daniels' incompetence is finally getting some press after the film screened at the New York Film Festival. No one seemed to have a bad word to say about it at Sundance, Cannes or Toronto. Poverty porn, emotional porn, a new kind of blaxploitation, an impeccably acted piece of trash, a con job -- all of these descriptions are appropriate. One of the highlights of White's review points out one of Daniels' unsubtle, messy visual gimmicks: "The scene where Precious carries her baby past a “Spay and Neuter Your Pets” sign is sick." But I can't help but give it up, as most of the film's detractors other than White seem to be doing, to the actors, from newcomer Sidibe, a monstrous, Joan Crawford-on-welfare Mo'Nique, a make-up-less, ratty-wig-donning, Jersey-accented Mariah Carey and Paula Patton as the light-skinned lesbian teacher/saint who looks after Precious. Whether the actresses' collectively marvelous performances add to Daniels' lunacy or rise above it isn't certain... all I know is that, thanks to its audacity, if Precious does manage to take home the Best Picture Oscar next February, I won't moaning as much as I did when that other overblown race-issue melodrama did a few years back.

Why I Do Not Trust the DTES's Wendy Pedersen

On Monday November 23, 2009 I decided to attend a forum on homelessness and the Olympics at SFU Harbour Centre. Below is a description:

When the Olympic bid process was underway, the Inner City Inclusive Commitment was signed in 2003 and included commitments around a housing legacy and protection from Olympic related evictions. This public forum, hosted by the Impact on Communities Coalition, will look at the impacts of the 2010 Olympics on housing and other urbanization processes underway in Vancouver including the crisis of affordability, the proliferation of homelessness and loopholes in tenancy legislation which are resulting in evictions.

I was particularly attracted by the quality of the panelists...including Nathan Edelson, a former City planner, Reverend Rick Matthews, Martha Lewis of TRAC, and Monte Paulson. Also on the panel was Wendy Pedersen, someone with whom I have had numerous disagreements over the past two years and who, despite her advocacy for the poor and downtrodden, has effectively halted what I consider numerous worthwhile initiatives in the DTES community.

The first speakers were all very thoughtful, and the general consensus seemed to be that while the Olympics have had negative ramifications, in fact, there have also been many benefits, including the purchase and renovations of many SRO hotels. Furthermore, the evictions that were predicted, really haven't happened.

However, when Ms. Pedersen began to speak, I was stunned by her remarks. Before accusing City Councillor Geoff Meggs of saying that having a low income community is unethical, she made the following statement which she attributable to Jack Poole.

"The real purpose of the 2010 Olympics bid is to seduce the provincial and federal governments and long-suffering taxpayers into footing a billion-dollar bill to pave the path for future real
estate sales."

While I suspected that Ms. Pedersen had distorted Meggs' comments, I knew in my heart that Jack Poole would never have said, nor thought what she attributed to him. Unfortunately, Jack is no longer with us to defend himself, so I decided to source out the truth. I found it in a June 2002 edition of the Western Investor.

As I expected, it turned out that Jack Poole never uttered these words. While he was referenced in the article, they were editor Frank O'brien's words, written as part of his lead editorial. Ms. Pedersen probably knew this too, but it was far more effective for her to attribute the quote to Jack Poole, former Chair of VANOC, to an audience comprising many of her supporters....one in which I was the only person wearing a tie!

This is not the first time Ms. Pedersen has altered the truth to suit her purposes. She often does it and while it might seem petty of me to point this out, I do so because I truly believe that she has had a very negative impact on worthwhile efforts to achieve progress in the DTES community. Notwithstanding her 'sweet little girl' manner, she is a very harmful lady.

I have written to Ms. Pedersen, pointing out that she misquoted Jack Poole, and expressing the hope that she try not to misquote others in the future, especially when they are no longer around to defend themselves. I shared my note with some of the other panelists, including the highly respected Monte Paulson, who was booed off the podium at the same forum by some of those in attendance who didn't like the very sensible message he was bringing.

I doubt my email will have much effect. Ms. Pedersen has a particular agenda and while her following is much more limited today than it was 2 years ago when I started volunteering in the DTES community, she will continue to do her best to block condo developments and other regeneration efforts if they might reduce her fame and popularity as a community activist, one who often gets to appear on radio and television and speak at community forums such as the one I attended on Monday night.

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============================================

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============================================

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============================================

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============================================

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============================================

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============================================

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============================================

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============================================
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============================================
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____________________

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____________________
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Millennium Mambo, Part 3

More on the Best of the Decade list round-up from Mike D'Angelo and the Skandies, which was actually posted earlier this month (and which I thought I had already mentioned, but... I guess not) and from Glenn Kenny. D'Angelo and the Skandies listed 20 films and 20 performances, with Lars von Trier's Dogville and Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood topping the respective lists. First, the films:

01. Dogville, 2003, d. Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/UK/France/Germany/Norway/Finland/Netherlands, Lionsgate
02. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004, d. Michel Gondry, USA, Focus Features
03. In the Mood for Love, 2000, d. Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/China/France, USA Films/Criterion
04. Mulholland Drive, 2001, d. David Lynch, USA/France, Universal Studios
05. There Will Be Blood, 2007, d. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, Paramount Vantage/Miramax
06. The New World, 2005, d. Terrence Malick, USA/UK, New Line
07. Memento, 2000, d. Christopher Nolan, USA, Newmarket Films
08. 25th Hour, 2002, d. Spike Lee, USA, Touchstone
09. Yi yi: A One and Two, 2000, d. Edward Yang, Taiwan/Japan, Fox Lorber/Criterion
10. No Country for Old Men, 2007, d. Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, USA, Paramount Vantage/Miramax
11. Before Sunset, 2004, d. Richard Linklater, USA, Warner Independent
12. Silent Light [Stellet licht], 2007, d. Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Netherlands/Germany, Palisades Tartan
13. Kill Bill, Volume 1, 2003, d. Quentin Tarantino, USA, Miramax
14. Werckmeister Harmonies [Werckmeister harmóniák], 2000, d. Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, Hungary/Italy/Germany/France, Facets
15. Irréversible, 2002, d. Gaspar Noé, France, Lionsgate
16. Zodiac, 2007, d. David Fincher, USA, Paramount
17. Ghost World, 2001, d. Terry Zwigoff, USA/UK/Germany, United Artists
18. The Man Who Wasn't There, 2001, d. Joel Coen, USA/UK, USA Films
19. Trouble Every Day, 2001, d. Claire Denis, France/Germany/Japan, Lot 47 Films
20. Gerry, 2002, d. Gus Van Sant, USA, Miramax

And the performances...

01. Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
02. Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
03. Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive
04. Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake
05. Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher [La pianiste]
06. Summer Phoenix, Esther Kahn
07. Björk, Dancer in the Dark
08. Laura Dern, Inland Empire
09. Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen [Rois et reine]
10. Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York
11. Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
12. Christian Bale, American Psycho
13. Billy Bob Thornton, The Man Who Wasn't There
14. Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
15. Laura Linney, You Can Count on Me
16. Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
17. Q'orianka Kilcher, The New World
18. Julianne Moore, Far from Heaven
19. Peter Sarsgaard, Shattered Glass
20. Aurélien Recoing, Time Out [L'emploi du temps]

I don't have much to say about either list, aside from... Summer Phoenix? Really? Above Björk? Well, not just above Björk, but on the list altogether. I remember her lead performance in Arnaud Desplechin's English-language Esther Kahn to lack quite a bit. I'm still planning on revisiting that one before the year ends, so I'll let you know then. And I've complained enough about Ghost World; unless it starts showing up a lot more often, I'm keeping mum.

Glenn Kenny's list covers his "Seventy Greatest Films of the Decade," in alphabetical order from A.I. to Zodiac. Of the nice surprises on the list: Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl, Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience (which I don't think was a bit of personal bias, despite the fact that he played one of Sasha Grey's johns), Azazel Jacobs' The GoodTimesKid, Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, Brad Bird's The Incredibles, Clint Eastwood's Invictus (which he can't talk about yet... but this inclusion isn't stirring any interest in me as Gran Torino is also on his list), Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar, Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais, Hong Sang-soo's Night and Day, Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours and Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. I spotted a few other Best of the Decade lists floating around, but most of them were deplorable, so I'm not going to waste posting/linking to them.

I also meant to thank Eric over at IonCinema for first directing me toward the TIFF list I posted yesterday, and please do check out out Blake Williams' blog, who also included TIFF's picks for the 1990s, which was topped with Víctor Erice's The Dream of Life [El sol del membrillo], still without a DVD release in the US, and included my favorite first-time viewing of a not-2000-era film in 2009, Olivier Assayas' L'eau froide. Thanks guys. Now, on to some writing of my own...