Wine and cheese pairing is not just for the snobby connoisseur or the elite diner. Anyone can be a part of this wonderful dining experience and spend an evening savoring it yourself. Since all of us are different and more importantly, all of our taste buds are different, what master vintners and world class fromagiers may say is a correct pairing, may not work for the rest of us. By all means listen to what they might suggest, because they have a lot of experience with taste –but, remember they are just suggestions. It’s the differences that make life interesting.
Cheese and wine by their very nature are even different from vat to vat. You may be making the same product, but in the food world, there are many variables to production. Terroir plays a significant role in both wine and cheese. Grapes taken from sunny slopes of Italy have a different terroir than grapes taken from valleys in France. It’s the same with cheese. Milk coming from animals in Swiss Alpine regions possesses distinct flavors that differ from milk from animals on Canadian Prairies.
Understanding the basic concepts of flavors and how they pair, will give you a platform to make your own pairing decisions. Cheese influences the taste of wine more than vice versa. Wines with lots of flavour work with cheese that also have lots of flavour. Subtle wines work with delicate cheese; therefore hard cheese with red wines and soft cheese with white. Fruity wines pair nicely with tangy acidic cheese. A sour salty cheese makes a wine taste milder. Sometimes, pairing wines with cheese from the same area works well together. Spicy flavored cheese work well with sweet desert wines.
Sometimes a heavy sugar wine works with a blue cheese. But, in the long run, it’s all up to you to try it out, and find out what sits well with you. Your goal is to create a balance of flavors of wine and cheese together.
Here are a few pairings of wine and cheese that you might care to try out.
Florence Estate Winery from Langton has a delightful chardonnay -with its light oak and hints of fruit pairs well with the Swiss Alpine Gruyere from the Canton of Fribourg. The subtle textures of the cheese draw out the fruity hints of the wine.
Villa Nova Estate Winery has a Riesling that is clear and floral, and the terroir of their region adds a slight twist of richness that differs slightly German Rieslings. This makes pairing with the English Double Gloucester a true experience. The saltiness of the cheddar takes the edge from the sweetness of the wine.
I am looking forward to sampling the other Norfolk County wines from Burning Kiln, Burning Mills Villa Nova Estate and Wooden Bear-L , when I get the chance. Maybe this weekend I can give it a shot with some close friends and a board of cheese. For the Silo, Scott Jensen.
Machinarium is not a new videogame. But if, like many gamers, you overlooked it when it was released in late 2009, you owe it to yourself to go back and pay it some attention. Machinarium may look simple or perhaps even a touch primitive at first glance, but in reality the game is an inspirational fairy tale set in a wondrous, grimy world of living machines; a touching story of struggle, heroism and robot-love.
One of Machinarium’s most remarkable qualities is the way its tale is woven without a single word—there’s not one instance of speech or text in the entire game. Instead, everything is told visually. Dialog between characters unfolds as brief animations, while plot details are filled in through flashbacks.
Even the physical appearances of the game’s denizens, from the diminutive main character to his ruffian tormentors and the strutting, tin-pot police who, in theory at least, guard over the city, figure prominently in the storytelling process, as the pint-sized underdog struggles against bullies and thugs to be the hero his doe-eyed beloved has always believed him to be.
That may be a lot to read into a game that, bizarre setting aside, is a fairly straightforward point-and-click adventure. From a gameplay standpoint, Machinarium is solid if not particularly noteworthy. But the details of its world most definitely are. Each level and everything in it is entirely hand-drawn, providing a unique and whimsical visual style, while the soundtrack, both musical and ambient, is every bit as impressive—possibly more so. The combined effect is nothing short of extraordinary.
Gamers unfamiliar with the standards of “adventure logic,” in which odd, occasionally arbitrary sequences of actions are required to complete tasks and move things forward, may need a little time to get settled, but veterans of the genre will feel right at home. You will collect objects, you will combine objects, and you will use those objects on other objects to make things happen. But the game mechanics are actually quite simple, because everything is visual and its various regions are fairly tightly compartmentalized. Some of the problems you’ll face are real stumpers, however, and while one hint is available for each of the game’s screens, don’t expect it to do much more than give you a very gentle nudge in the right direction.
But that’s okay. Machinarium is a slow-burning experience that’s best savored rather than merely consumed. It crafts gripping beauty out of an ugly world in a way that elevates it from the merely good to the truly memorable. It’s not for everyone: twitchy Halo junkies probably won’t find too much to like in it. But for anyone in the mood for something a little more thoughtful, or who’d just like to see the videogame medium stretch its legs a little bit, Machinarium is a wonderful, magical game that simply should not be missed. For the Silo, Andy Chalk.
Generations of Haldimand and Norfolk citizens have found and collected stone artifacts from their lands. Artifacts were kept out of intrigue and interest and often displayed prominently within homes. Some were valued as family heirlooms, others placed in boxes and kept packed away on a shelf. This is where I enter the story. My name is Lorenz Bruechert and I am an archaeologist.
Not long ago a land owner told me that artifacts had been collected from his family property over many, many years. I was invited to make an examination because the owner knew they might be important to my regional archaeological study (www.haldimandarchresearchproject.com). There still was a little hesitation, primarily out of concern that I might confiscate the artifacts. But that is not what I do. My interest in private collections from prehistoric times is based in public outreach and education.
I was able to provide the owner with a time period of the artifacts, the type of rock used in their manufacture, and their origins. You see, I believe it is important to foster trust and to empower landowners with information, thereby ensuring their collections are valued, respected and hopefully made available for scientific study.
Private collections reflect the richness of our homelands and confirm the reality of past human occupation. Trying to make sense of who primitive occupants were and how they lived is helped immensely by studying the ages and quantities of found artifacts. Artifacts date from within historic periods to as far back as when glaciers still existed in Southern Ontario. In fact, many land owners are surprised to learn that their collections are much older than a few hundred years.
At least 80% of human history is represented by stone artifacts. The rock used is generally a sedimentary variety containing silica. The more silica a rock has, the easier it is to break apart. The geological name for the type of stone used in most tool manufacture is chert or flint. Chert formations date as far back as the age of the dinosaurs. They were scoured and scraped by the movement of glaciers and carried along until the glacier melted. What this means is that an artifact found in Haldimand or Norfolk may have originated thousands of kilometers away!
In Southern Ontario, stone tool artifacts have been recovered and dated within several different main time periods. Each period shows variations thought to reflect climate changes that made an impact on animal and plant species. As species changed or disappeared, new types of stone tools were manufactured to keep up with these transitions. Dating artifacts, therefore, helps to identify migrations of different people groups across our counties’ deep past.
Most landowners truly enjoy having their artifacts interpreted. Their private collections remain intact and local people become, in a sense, guardians of local history. If a family is not interested in acting as stewards, I always encourage them to donate their pieces to a local museum, to ensure that the artifacts remain in the community.
Lorenz Bruechert will return soon for another installment of local archaeology. You can contact Lorenz at hnarproject@gmail.com.
I’d about had it with Bell Canada. My internet, home phone and basic satellite TV charges had incrementally and infuriatingly risen each month until I was red-faced steaming every time the outrageous bill appeared in my mailbox. I needed to reduce that burden, but….I needed some sort of plan.
The first step, I thought, would be to get rid of the TV portion of my package. I didn’t think I could go cold turkey though, so I had to come up with a solution for replacing what I was going to lose. I continued to stew and pay the bills, but in the meantime I started exploring what I could get for free online. I also experimented with some old-school rabbit ears, but those things didn’t really cut it.
Then, out of nowhere, like manna falling from heaven, the sweetness known as Netflix became available in Canada. I pounced. Now for only $7.99 a month I have an all-you-can-eat buffet of TV series and movies right at my fingertips. It’s all available through my wireless internet, works in combination with my Nintendo Wii (you can also use an xbox360 or Playstation3) and is viewable on my television. All for the price of two video rentals.
Once my mind was suitably blown by Netflix, let me tell you how satisfying and liberating it was to call Bell and cancel my TV service. It went something like this: “Hey, Bell , just wanted to tell you that you can go screw yourself. Instead of dealing with your over-priced and over-rated service, I’ve got something that meets my viewing needs at next to no cost at all”. Ahhh. Now that was nice.
Bell has since been mailing thank you notes for my long time patronage, encouraging me to “give them a call” to learn about all the “savings they have in store for me.” I mean really, give me a break. Couldn’t the money they’re spending on that embossed greeting card, and postage, be better used? And why don’t they offer these “great deals” when you’re already a subscriber? Oh man, I’m starting to burn again…
Okay, with Netflix there are some serious sacrifices that you might not be willing to make. First of all: no live sports. For some this may be impossible to accept. However I’ve been a staunch Toronto Raptors fan since their inception, and I thought I’d miss them big time. But I found that I just stopped caring. Of course the Raptors extreme ineptitude certainly made things easier.
Overall, I found that if it’s out of sight it really is out of mind. Trust me, your mind will get filled up with something else. No American Idol? Maybe it’s time to challenge yourself. There’s always YouTube if you absolutely have to see that results show. What about reading a book as an alternative?
The movies on Netflix are not “right out of the theatre” but that doesn’t seem to bother me. There are so many genres to choose from, and so many films I’ve missed or forgotten about, that it’s all new to me anyway. If you still can’t bear the thought of losing your cable, consider using Netflix as a supplement.
Next on the agenda is to get rid of my home phone, another huge part of my bill with *****. When I called to cancel my TV they delighted in telling me I was under contract for telephone service until June, and would have to pay a $200 termination fee to cancel it. Like, whatever. Why am I even surprised? For the Silo, John McIntosh.
Movie expectations are a dangerous bag. We savor anticipation, but envisioning a positive experience before you’ve actually had the experience can warp perception and lead to anti-climax: the proverbial let down.
Hype is another form of expectation, one that is projected from external sources. And how many times have we heard the phrase: “It just doesn’t live up to the hype.” We get suckered by marketing and take solace in acerbic criticism. We love to hate the let down.
I went to my local video store a couple of weeks ago on a mission. It was time, I decided, to watch The Social Network, the much acclaimed film by director David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club) about the founding of Facebook.
Rarely do my trips to Super-A Video feel like such an event. First of all, Columbia Pictures has gone all out on a gorgeous, deluxe box for this film. I felt like I was in a record store again, holding in my hands, for the first time, a new album I had been waiting for. Some of you will remember what that was like…
On the cover, a host of superlatives from the likes of The New York Times, New Yorker, and Rolling Stone Magazine. “Stupendous!” “Exhilarating!” “Absolutely emblematic of its time and place!” The list of ecstatic declamations was exhilarating in itself. But it also made me nervous. Will it live up to the hype[rbole]?
So this was my Friday night. I dimmed the lights and sank into my couch, prepared for what was, in the educated opinion of many, a defining cinematic event. This is my substitute for romance, I guess. And in this case: no anticlimax.
The film starts at a blistering pace with a scene of two people sitting relatively still. The momentum is in the dialogue, in the intellectual animation of two brains on fire. I watched the movie again on Saturday, this time with a friend, and he was literally on the edge of his seat, concentrating to following the rapid-fire repartee which is the opening salvo of Fincher’s film. And then he said, “Wow. What a way to start a movie.” Certainly makes you pay attention.
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, TV’s The West Wing), who is known for his dense, tightly scripted approach to writing, has already won the Golden Globe for this piece of work and the Oscar seems likely. But don’t let my description of the opening scene scare you off. The Social Network is not an exhausting experience. It chronicles a moment of great creative outpouring in the lives of brilliant people who think very quickly, and it finds a way to carry you along, and in, to the tale of their accomplishments and relationships.
The DVD extras illuminate what can happen when a great director, writer and actors work collaboratively on a project like this, providing a rare glimpse into the artistic process of an incredible team. Fincher (Golden Globe, Best Director), comes off as an affable perfectionist, admired in spite of the fact that he will do 99 takes of a scene—ie: that electric opening. And the newly feted Jesse Eisenberg, with a host of Best Actor nominations for his role as principle Facebook architect Mark Zuckerberg, seems almost as smart as the genius he portrays.
The other star of this film is Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ original soundtrack. At times haunting, at times propulsive, these long-time musical partners (Nine Inch Nails) have created a techno film score that will make your home theatre sing. Never obtrusive, always complimentary, it adds tone and depth, feeling and movement to this film. And it is cool. This is important. Zuckerberg knew that, with Facebook, he was on to something cool. He also knew that there is no more precious commodity—aside from sex—when it comes to marketing to young adults.
The Social Network, too, is that rare constellation of co-factors: it is a document, and example, of pop-culture that is blisteringly smart, sophisticated, exciting, funny, sexy, and cool. It is also a work of art, and for all of these reasons it is, truly, an emblem and anthem of our time. For the Silo, Chris Dowber.
One of Will Ferrell's most original roles, from 2001's ZoolanderFebruary can be hard, but March might be even harder. March is like exam week in the University of Winter: you’ve already had a really long haul and now you just have to steel yourself and push through to the end. There is drudgery in any life I guess, but I believe in taking breaks, and a funny movie can be like a 90 minute tropical holiday.
Reclining recently, cozy on my couch, I found myself contemplating two actors who seem to have their fingers on the comic zeitgeist. So the next time you’re at your local video store, or cruising Netflix for a digital vacation, keep an eye open for their films and beat the blahs while you warm your cockles.
The first is Michael Cera (pr. like Sarah), a quirky kid from Brampton with incredible comic timing who makes intelligence cool and softspoken wit accessible to a new generation. He got his first acting gig in a Tim Horton’s commercial (Wikipedia disclaimer), but I became aware of him watching Arrested Development, one of those truly brilliant television series that comes along now and then, creates a cult following and wins every possible award, but never generates the popular groundswell necessary for longevity on network TV. An Arrested Development movie is slated for 2012 release however, in case you’re interested…
You may have also seen Cera in Jason Reitman’s Juno (yes, that is the son of comedy legend Ivan Reitman), which generated big buzz in 2007, winning the Oscar for best screenplay and receiving a total of four nominations.
Diablo Cody’s script begins with a barrage of hipster language that put me off at first, but the story quickly evolves into a touching and comic tale about a very interesting teenage girl coming to terms with an unplanned pregnancy and the people it brings into her life. And Cera is perfect as Bleeker, a smart, quiet kid who might be relegated to a painful highschool nerdom if he wasn’t so sure of who he was.
Michael Cera’s become a big star in the last five years (he’s just 22), headlining a host of oddball films tailor made for his unique persona, which makes me think of Bob Newhart as a hip, skinny teenager. Titles like Superbad and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a contemporary comic-book of a film in which the young hero must defeat his lady-love’s seven evil ex-boyfriends, have been very successful vehicles. But my absolute favourite is 2009’s Youth in Revolt.
With a remarkable screenplay based on C.D. Payne’s novel Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp, this film is up there in the intelligent-teen-movie stratosphere formerly inhabited solely by director John Hughes in the 1980’s (Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). But Youth in Revolt is distinctly more literary, with an artful style and darker edge for the new millennium.
Cera plays a precocious young man who must create a dashing, sociopathic alter ego to accomplish things his normal, mild-mannered self could never do—kind of like Fightclub except, in this case, ego and id work in tandem, side by side, in full awareness of one another.
There are so many reasons to love this movie, but for me Cera’s performance is at the top of the list. One of the only criticisms I’ve heard of this young star is that his characters are so similar, film to film, like Woody Allen without all the mania. But in Youth in Revolt, we get to see Cera really act. His portrayal of Nicholas’s Twisp’s alter ego, Francios Dillinger, is one of the most enjoyable performances I’ve seen. Ever. The transformation is subtle but total, and utterly believable. And the white pants…but I won’t say too much.
Will Ferrell is the other guy working right now who really does it for me. To take a momentary detour, Bill Murray has a cameo role in 2009’s Zombieland that sets up the way I think about Ferrell. When Emma Stone’s character recognizes Murray as himself she cries, “This guy has a direct line to my funnybone!” Will Ferrell has become that actor for me.
I remember an appearance he made on ABC’s The View a few years back. He was just sitting there in a jacket, sporting that little fluffy perm of his, and one of the hosts asked him how he’d been doing. “Fine,” he said. “Just fine.” Then there was a beat, and everyone started to laugh. Someone even commented on it. “You don’t even have to do anything and I laugh.”
Now, why is that? What is that? Was it the way he pitched his voice, the terseness of his response, the barely perceptible glimmer in his eye, or the relative stillness with which he held his body? The answer, I think, is yes: it was all of those things. But there was something else as well, an almost palpable comic energy that he generates, an X-factor that is greater than the sum of all those parts. Sometimes I just look at him and I’m done.
Ferrell became famous on Saturday Night Live and has gone on to become one of the most recognizable actors, comic or otherwise, of our time. He has reached a rare echelon. His name is pretty much a household word.
His magnum opuses, if you will forgive the term, are probably Anchorman, Talledega Nights, and Semi-Pro—three films that could be considered a kind of trilogy, if you think about it. They all feature many of the same (A-list) actors, and in each one Ferrell plays a similar character: a charismatic doofus in love with himself but largely ignorant about anything of genuine substance. They are all funny films, sometimes gut-bustingly funny. But I recently saw him opposite Mark Walberg in The Other Guys, another star-studded comedy in which the two leads play cops with unbalanced personalities. And this one is a little different.
It’s another big-budget comedy; action-comedy really. And we get to see Ferrell lying on the ground at one point, screaming non-sequiturs at the top of his voice in a style that has become one of his trademarks, going right back to SNL and his appearance in the first Austin Powers movie.
But what’s really fun about The Other Guys is the way it showcases that incredible energy Will Ferrell brings to deadpan comedy. Nobody does it quite like he does.
Ferrell has tried his hand at more serious roles, opposite the likes Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman in Stranger Than Fiction, although I never quite believed him in this film, kind of like I never believed Bill Murray in The Razor’s Edge. And while Murray, in his maturity, went on to give us his wonderful interpretation of an aging actor in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, one of the best films of 2003, he did it by using his naturally funny energy; toning it down, sublimating it, until he finally broke through into something, someone, simply sweet, and truly human. It was a subtle piece of work. Whether or not Will Ferrell, the man who gave us Mugatu, can do something like this…doesn’t really matter. Certainly he was born to be funny, and there’s nothing wrong with that. AG
I have been following, with some amusement, the media firestorm unleashed since the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council decided in mid-January that the classic, 25 year old Dire Straits song Money for Nothing must be censored. According to the CBSC, times have changed and the word “faggot” is now inappropriate for Canadian airwaves. The CBC, National Post, and newspapers from Edmonton to Ottawa have all weighed in, including our own Simcoe Reformer, expressing outrage over the censorship of a critically acclaimed work of art and, well, political correctness just generally gone mad. While I agree that this is a censorship issue, you have to dig to find commentary about why it’s such an interesting one.
If you put the lyrics together with the music video, the song appears to be written from the perspective of two furniture and appliance movers watching the early days of MTV at work. They are making their case to one another, colourfully, that rock stars get their “money for nothing” (you’ll recognize the song title) and their “chicks for free—” the implication being that if these two very hardworking fellows are getting any “chicks,” it’s because they’ve paid for them. The lyrics at the centre of the debate are as follows:
“The little faggot with the earring and the makeup (ya buddy, that’s his own hair).
The little faggot’s got his own jet airplane. The little faggot is a millionaire.”
Now that really is a lot of “faggots” for family hour, to be sure. But in context, the song does not read as homophobic. On the contrary, it is a parody of some hard-talking, blue collar guys and their feelings about rock stars—written, remember, by rock stars (and yes, that is Sting on background vocals).
I was in high-school when this song came out and I can’t tell you how many jocks and future frat boys sang it to me on the bus, thinking they were making a cruel and clever joke. The irony wasn’t lost on me. They weren’t paying attention: not to the song, or to themselves, or to the disconnect between their affection for makeup and leotard wearing glam-metal bands like Poison and Cinderella—even Motley Crew—and calling me “gay” for dressing like I was in The Cure. But I guess that’s more hypocrisy than irony, and this is starting to become revenge.
Here’s another level of irony: censoring the word “faggot” actually neuters songwriter Mark Knopfler’s commentary on, if not homophobia, then at least a kind of prejudice based, seemingly, in resentment. Knopfler’s characters—and that is what they are—see the stars of MTV as representative of an easy life, as far away from their backbreaking drudgery as the moon. Looked at in this way, they are not quite the same as the blustery boys on my school bus. But they have something in common: for them, calling someone a “faggot” isn’t necessarily a comment on sexual orientation. It’s more a measurement of traditional masculinity.
But what about blatant racism? There’s another line in this song that’s not even part of the current censorship debate. “What’s that,” our refrigerator movers continue? “Hawaian noises? They’re bangin’ on those bongos like a chimpanzee.” OK, apparently there have been no angry calls to the Standards Council about that line. If there was any doubt before, Knopfler’s picture of these men is now crystal clear…if you’re paying attention.
The moral of this story? I’ll tell you my favourite: It is a dangerous thing to release a controversial work of popular art that requires careful reading. And one question remains: who taught the brainiacs at the CBSC to read? JS
CBSC is the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, who act to ensure that an acceptable code of operation is met for media broadcast. This means that they control what you and I are “allowed” to hear and see. If you agree that censoring a classic rock song because it has been misinterpreted is wrong, please add a “like” to the link on our Facebook wall. It seems that Canadians have been blocked from viewing the unedited Dire Straits Money for Nothing video from Youtube as well, so here’s a little gem to enjoy instead. – Content Producer
In the videogame world there’s immersive gaming and then there’s immersive gaming. Take Blizzard’s World of Warcraft for example. Not only can you buy “virtual treasure and items” on eBay using real life money, there’s a new cataclysm expansion pack that allows your character to learn a new archaeology skill and visit “virtual dig sites” to gather your own artifacts. This sort of ingame depth and detail is why over 12,000,000 people spend a great deal of time “existing” in the virtual World of Warcraft.
Featured image- middlesavagery.files.wordpress.com
Picture yourself swimming in the shallows of Lake Erie over 400 million years ago. You might come up with all kinds of ideas of what primitive life was like. Some might imagine archaic sharks and bony, lobe-finned fish, but I bet very few would conjure up Phacops Rana.
Great Eyesight
This specialized trilobite can be found throughout Norfolk County in shale deposits and occasionally on our beaches, embedded in fossilized chunks of coral. One member of The Silo team discovered a beautiful specimen preserved this way, but it takes a keen eye to recognize them. That’s because the only way to find them is to identify the one feature of Phacops Rana that is its namesake: phacopid eyes. You see, this trilobite had two large eyes that were full of round, swiveling lenses, giving the creature an advantage when it came to escaping predators.
Flaking and percussion bulbs point towards human manufacture
This stone shows signs of ancient human manufacture. Percussive bulbs result from being hammered and chipped, and facial flaking along the sides are strong indicators. It was retrieved in April 2010 from the then drained shoreline of Silver Lake millpond in Port Dover, Ontario. In the vicinity of the stone were animal bones and glacial till.
Provide clear standards and guidelines for the preservation of provincial heritage properties.
Enhance protection of heritage conservation districts, marine heritage sites and archaeological resources.
Even when cultural artifacts are not immediately discovered, a cultural assessment must take place to establish any archaeological remains. The Cayuga Bridge construction project was delayed due to this requirement.
The Rocket is a story about a man, a husband, a machinist and a hockey player; a man juggling a day job, a marriage and a passion to play “the game.”
His journey is classical and it has all of the elements of a Greek comedy, with the effect, just like in the Aristotelian tradition, of purging our souls of fear and pity- it is a catharsis. The fact that this is the story of a hockey player trying to make it in the the big time is something many Canadians can relate to: the quest has become a modern day myth in itself with legions of hockey parents secretly living the dream vicariously through their children.
Imagine, then, the impact that Maurice Richard had on an entire generation of francophones. During his playing years, many French-Canadians suffered through an undisguised social prejudice; Richard perhaps more than most. But this was a man who never gave up for long. Despite the stigma of being French, and a labourer; despite being viewed as “too soft, too small for the game,” Maurice Richard rose above and became “The Rocket”. For the Silo, Jarrod Barker.
Playing on Netflix at the time of this writing. Watch for Shawn Avery the pesky New York Ranger left-winger in a casting coup.
C’est une histoire au sujet d’un homme, d’un mari, d’un machiniste et d’un joueur d’hockey. Un homme jonglant un travail de jour, un rapport et une passion de jouer « le jeu ». Son voyage est classique et il a tous les éléments d’une comédie grecque et a l’effet de, juste comme dans la tradition aristotélicienne, purgeant notre âme de la crainte et le plaint est une catharsis. Le fait que c’est une histoire d’un joueur d’hockey essayant de faire le de premier rang est quelque chose beaucoup de Canadiens et Norfolkers peut se rapporter à et cette recherche est devenu un mythe moderne de jour en soi avec des légions d’hockey parents secrètement la vie le rêve délégué par leurs propres enfants.
Imaginez alors l’impact que Maurice Richard a eu sur une génération entière de francophone. Pendant ses années de jeu, beaucoup de Canadiens français ont souffert par un préjudice et un Richard sociaux ouverts
peut-être davantage que les la plupart. Mais c’était un homme qui n’a jamais abandonné pour longtemps. Contre les confins d’être un canadien français, contre les confins d’être un travailleur, contre les confins de l’visionnement en tant que « trop doucement, trop petits pour le jeu.
Maurice Richard est devenu le Rocket.
Maintenez une surveillance pour un garde forestier embêtant Shawn Avery de New York de gauche dans un coup de bâti.
If you’re like me and grew up on a rich diet of 1980’s science fiction films, you should walk (no make that moonwalk) to your nearest video store and ask for MOON. This little gem is an existential journey into the mind of a lonely farmer-astronaut and hits close to home. Sure there’s the usual high contrast and gritty sci-fi production values, but there are also some poignant connections to our rural habitat. Picture a massive, rambling, white combine harvester gathering hay under a full, late fall moon, except that in this case the moon is the earth. A tiny, lonely man is hunched over the controls in an elevated and sealed cockpit. Now remove all semblance of colour, add a few craters and hills, and you get part of what makes this film so familiar and, dare I say, rural.
Growing up here as a boy I imagined that the once plentiful silos and drive-sheds in Norfolk (especially the aluminum ones) were rocket platforms and moon bases. Even the large, four wheeled crop sprayers had a space age look to them. And that is why I felt especially connected to Duncan Jones’ incredibly moving MOON. It pulled me in and felt familiar.
If I had to bet the farm I’d say the production designer looked at both farms and farm machinery while working out the aesthetics of this movie. But more than that, the story pulls at your heartstrings.
Sam (played by the remarkably versatile Sam Rockwell in a breakthrough role) is a lonely astronaut working on the moon, farming the soil for energy until he begins to suffer from extreme isolation- complete with lucid dreams and hallucinations. What follows next is one of the finest surprise plot twists in contemporary cinema.
Satisfying space fiction from son of iconic rocker David Bowie. For the Silo, Jarrod Barker.
I was raised in the dairy farming community of Jarvis in Haldimand County. Since dairy was on the decline my family and I decided I would go to university. I began the study of archeology, and The Haldimand Norfolk Archaeological Research Project (HNARP) is a scientific study intended for my doctoral dissertation.
I selected this region because as a youth I walked across many of the county concessions and came to have an understanding of the landscape. In addition, there is continuous encroachment on the farm lands in the form of housing subdivisions in growing communities, industrial development along the lakeshore, and external landowners waiting to develop the land. The long term goal of the HNARP is to improve current evidence of prehistoric climate change and to determine its impact on early people. A study has never before been undertaken in Ontario over such a large parcel of land, and it needs to be done now before the opportunity is lost forever.
When the Laurentide ice sheet began receding 20,000 years ago the lands left behind were devastated by glaciers that destroyed plant life and any chance for animal or human survival. The first hints of people in the region date back 11,000 years. Evidence of their existence is in the form of stone debris and tools left behind on the ground. In fact, Haldimand is the locus of our study because of the abundant chert formations in the region (chert is a type of flinty rock). These were a continuous draw for early people constantly in need of stone for tools and weapons. This same geology is the source of the quarry rock that provides jobs and careers in the community today.
Which brings us to one of the most rewarding outcomes of this kind of archeology: the people of Haldimand-Norfolk will begin to understand their relationship to the land as part of a 10,000 year history of human habitation. By systematically studying the major watersheds we can learn much of both archeological and environmental importance. Settlement patterns emerge. We begin to see how fluctuations in the climate of the Great Lakes region impacted plant and animal life, and the seasonal availability of certain foods. As we learn about the past we discover connections to the present, and can plan more effectively for the future. But the evidence we need can only exist under certain conditions, and development is not one of them. The HNARP must act now to learn what we can.
Our success depends on agricultural landowners acting as stewards, to preserve and protect archaeological sites so they can be properly interpreted and understood. People are often concerned about what an archeological study on their lands might mean. Let me alleviate some of those concerns. The HNARP regional study is conducted on private property. That means simply: your land remains your land. All information relating to this scientific study is strictly private and confidential. No information is made public or shared with any institution or public organization. Generally, landowners can continue their farming practices without any interruption from this study.
One of the most interesting aspects of our work is something we call “community archaeology.” Interested community members can volunteer to be trained in to work with HNARP members, and become part of the discovery themselves. For the Silo, Lorenz Bruechert.
The Brothers BloomTHE BROTHERS BLOOM (2008)
D: Rian Johnson
I always get a little nervous when a movie starts with voice-over narration. Perhaps I shouldn’t– lots of good movies, especially American ones, begin with this omniscient voice. It’s arguably a lazy device, but effective if you want to pack a lot of background into a few short minutes. The Brother’s Bloom, writer/director Rian Johnson’s second major studio feature, manages to stand apart even in it’s use of this usually prosaic staple. Listen closely: the narration rhymes.
It turns out to be an appropriate opening gesture. The brothers, extremely literate con-men played by Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody, inhabit the modern world like glamorous anachronisms, gentlemen thieves in elegant suits who travel by steamer and luxury train. Into this consummately stylish dream falls–by no accident–Penelope Stamp, eccentric heiress and principle mark of their final job, played to perfection by Rachel Weisz.
Weisz is like heaven to watch. I can’t remember finding a woman so flawlessly beautiful for two straight hours (trust me, I’ve talked to a therapist about that irritating perfectionism). And a big part of the beauty of Penelope Stamp, apart from, or maybe as well as, her sad brown eyes and angelic countenance, is her deep intelligence, charm, whimsy and wisdom. Johnson has created a very compelling character here, and Weisz eats it up, scene after scene.
Another standout, in a movie full of standout acting, is Rinko Kikuchi as the brothers’ nearly mute and certainly odd explosives expert Bang Bang. Kikuchi has been a rising star in Japan for several years now–you can watch for her in some upcoming english-language films as well, notably Mikael Hafstrom’s Shanghai (she will take the lead in Ahn Hung Tran’s Norweigan Wood). Or just marvel at her here, as she carries on whole conversations without saying a word.
With The Brothers Bloom, Rian Johnson has assembled a stellar cast to follow his smart and very stylish lead, creating a film full of interesting, funny, even beautiful moments. Just wait until the tree falls over. I don’t think my telling you will ruin a thing.
Eva Brook was born in 1867, the year of confederation and, interesting as well, the incorporation of Moosehead Beer. Auspicious beginnings. Her Simcoe family owned The Brook Woollen Mill, and like many privileged children of her time she attended private school. She was fortunate to study art under Frederick Bell Smith, the renowned Canadian-Victorian painter, at Alma College in St. Thomas. Brook would later return to Alma as a teacher, and in fact headed the art department there.
In the 1890’s Eva emigrated to Mexico, where it seems she operated a bookstore, and where she may also have re-connected with her soon-to-be husband A.W. (Will) Donly, who she had known from school. After their marriage in Norfolk, the couple returned to Mexico where Will had taken the post of Canadian Trade Commissioner.
Eva’s skill as an artist continued to develop against the backdrops of her upper-class life in a diplomatic household, as well as the unrest following the 1910 Mexican revolution (though her paintings, as shown, do not reference the violence of that time). She made friends with the archaeologist Zelia Nuttal, who had developed a system for decoding the symbols of pre-Colombian art, and the current exhibition contains ceramics Brook-Donly decorated based on the Nuttal codex, as well pieces from her collection of Aztec pottery and artifacts.
After the Donly’s return to Canada Eva embraced the emerging, modern painting style of Tom Thomson and The Group of Seven, and her work began receiving more attention. In The Review of the Royal Canadian Exhibition, an article which appeared in Canadian Forum, December 1920, she is mentioned alongside Arthur Lismur, Franklin Carmichael and A.Y. Jackson. There are some hilly landscapes in some of her work that appear to directly quote Jackson’s treatment of the same.
It may be hard to fathom now but in 1920 The Group of Seven represented a revolution in Canadian painting, rankling the sensibilities of many established and more naturalistic artists. That Eva was attracted to their work, and understood it, suggests a progressive spirit–that is if picking up and moving to Mexico in the 1890’s was not enough for you. Any doubt will surely be erased by her decision to study with the American artist and designer Ralph Johonnot. His use of colour was vivid and idiosyncratic and his images, as one writer of the time put it, were like “illustrations for a fairy tale.” Brook Donly’s experiments with this style veritably leap out from among her other paintings as if they were sitting under a black light.
The impact of Mexico continued to feature in her art through the 20’s as well. If she picked up an interest in pattern design from Johonnot, she combined it to great effect with Aztec and Maya motifs to create striking, two-colour images for ceramics.
Eva Brook Donly was an early figure of the Simcoe establishment and one of the first members of the Norfolk Historical Society. For the Silo, Chris Dowber.
Dear Silo, I’m tired of jokes about the oil spill. Leno. Letterman. On June 1st 2010 John Stewart dedicated the entire “fake news” portion of his show to jokes about the spill. It’s true that much of the humour contained social and political commentary. But it wasn’t “funny.” Still, Stewart and his audience were killing themselves. Appropriate, I guess, since this issue highlights how we are all killing ourselves.
On the other hand, I like that his whole show was about this. Why is anyone talking about anything else? I know, life continues (for now). The World Cup is on. The Canadian auto sector is rebounding (perfect). Activists are crashing the Gaza blockade.
But you know what, I don’t care. Why aren’t we all parking our cars until we can convert them to run on biodiesel or excrement? Why are we watching Glee or driving to Dairy Queen or making love? Why are we not all in the streets in sackcloth and ashes, of one accord?
The world’s experts aren’t able to fix this leak, proving, as an acquaintance of mine pointed out, that there actually are no experts on how to fix deep sea oil leaks. They just know how to pump oil. And we all seem content to let them keep pumping oil for us. We shake our heads at the television footage and point fingers at negligent corporations and politicians, and then go back to pumping gas. Pumping hands. Making business deals. Making love.
In Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut proposes that at the end of the world, when the planet is truly and fully dead, the few surviving mammals will lose their sex drive. No drive to reproduce (what for?), to survive. No drive. Now that’s funny. Alan Dowber.
Dear Silo, I’m tired of jokes about the oil spill. Leno. Letterman. On June 1st 2010 John Stewart dedicated the entire “fake news” portion of his show to jokes about the spill. It’s true that much of the humour contained social and political commentary. But it wasn’t “funny.” Still, Stewart and his audience were killing themselves. Appropriate, I guess, since this issue highlights how we are all killing ourselves.