Varlaam

There once was a tradition in Toronto record stores of playing something execrable at closing time in order to drive people out of the store, Debbie Boone, Michael Jackson, whatever. Swill.

I had the fun yesterday of seeing the same experimental principle applied cinematically to a roomful of adults who were looking forward to watching a DVD just rented from Blockbuster, Cinematic Experiment A, a.k.a. "The Royal Tenenbaums".

The fidgeting began roughly ten minutes into the film. A further five minutes in, and the first experimental subject had her arms crossed. This was followed shortly thereafter by the significant crossing of the legs.

At the half-hour mark, a subject left the room entirely because he "had work to do". I was the next to leave after an hour because I "had to check on something".

Returning for the closing credits, I was informed that I had missed one (1) funny incident.

So much for a film billed as wacky and eccentric. Oh, and funny. The other intrepid aesthetes stuck it out to the end, but the verdict was unanimous. The reaction was something akin to narcolepsy. Fortunately the condition wasn't terminal.

If I remember correctly, our class was escorted to see this film at the Ontario Place Cinesphere on the big IMAX screen when it was brand new. If the 1974 date is on the money, then that would have been our Grade 8 class.

Virtually every kid in that class caught the schoolbus every morning at 8 a.m., so a comedy about a bus full of Canadian schoolkids stuck in the snow was hitting pretty close to home.

I guess that's why we all had the same feeling about this film: We agreed it was hilarious.

A lot of snow has come and gone since then, and my memories of it now are glimpsed through a frosted windowpane, but all the recollections are fond ones.

This eye-opening Canadian NFB documentary looks at daily life in a tiny village in Guinea-Bissau, the former Portuguese Guinea. It is truly mind-boggling to see how the daily activities of the village are all done in the most inefficient and labour-intensive manner possible. These people never seem to have invented either the table or the chair. Why do your food preparation on a tabletop when you can do it in the dirt instead? Why make yourself a broom with a long stick and a little piece of string when it's so easy to do your sweeping bent over double holding a teensy hand whisk? A man sits around all day lamenting that he would be working but he has no tools. But we'd seen his neighbours with tools earlier in the documentary. Don't they have the word "borrow" in the local language?

"Are these people for real?" is one's immediate and natural reaction. Watch this documentary if you've ever wondered how it was possible for a handful of Europeans to colonize all of Africa in a couple of decades.