PipesDreams

Aaaargh. AAAHHHHHH!!!! Why do there have to be so many motherf(*@&$ films I want to see? I know I bought 30 tickets for a reason, but I can’t actually AFFORD to use all 30 tickets, and plus I have about 30 people who want to get tickets from me for themselves and their significant others. And I’m not talking one or two. I mean like, six.

Shit.

Here is my tentative list of movies that I would like to see this year:

Thursday September 7, 2006
HANA, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2006 VARSITY 8 6:00 PM (Samurai film by the director of Maboroshi and After-Life)
Fido, Andrew Currie, 2006 RYERSON 9:15 PM (Canadian zombie film with Carrie-Ann Moss and Billy Connoly as the pet zombie)

Friday September 8, 2006
Penelope, Mark Palansky, 2006 ROY THOMSON HALL 6:30 PM (fairy tale about pig-snouted girl starring Christina Ricci and Reese Witherspoon)

Saturday September 9, 2006
Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Larry Charles, 2006 PARAMOUNT 2 1:15 PM (Sasha Baron Cohen aka Ali G. Respekt.)
Stranger than Fiction, Marc Forster, 2006 VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN) 6:00 PM (Will Ferrell in some weird dramedy about writers and books and stuff)
Babel, Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006 ROY THOMSON HALL 9:30 PM (cool crossover film between Spain and Japan with Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt)

Sunday September 10, 2006
Never Say Goodbye, Karan Johar, 2006 ROY THOMSON HALL 1:30 PM (Bollywood film – nobody will want to see this but me and every ex-pat Indian in the GTA)
Paris, je t’aime, Bruno Podalydès, Gurinder Chadha, Gus Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Coen, Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas, Christopher Doyle, Isabel Coixet, Nobuhiro Suwa, Sylvain Chomet, Alfonso Cuarón, Olivier Assayas, Oliver Schmitz, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Wes Craven, Tom Tykwer, Frédéric Auburtin, Gérard Depardieu, Alexander Payne, 2006 RYERSON 3:00 PM
The Last Kiss, Tony Goldwyn, 2006 RYERSON 6:00 PM (Zach. Braff.)
Cashback, Sean Ellis, 2006 VARSITY 1 8:45 PM (starring Sean My-staff-is-Bigger-than-your-Staff, aka the hottie Quidditch team captain of Harry Potter fame)

Monday September 11, 2006
Fay Grim, Hal Hartley, 2006 RYERSON 6:00 PM (Parker Posey and Jeff Goldblum… I dunno, it looks interesting)

Tuesday September 12, 2006
The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky, 2006 VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN) 6:00 PM (this is the guy who directed Pi and Requiem for a Dream; I am prepared for weeks of nightmares. Also, for the ladies, HUGH JACKMAN is in it with Rachel Weiss as his romantic interest. Hot.)

Wednesday September 13, 2006
Breaking and Entering, Anthony Minghella, 2006 ROY THOMSON HALL 6:30 PM (Again, I don’t strictly speaking NEED to see this, but it stars Jude Law, Juliette Binoche and Robin Wright Penn. Also, Minghella directed Truly, Madly, Deeply.)
Bugmaster, Katsuhiro Otomo, 2006 PARAMOUNT 3 9:30 PM (Otomo is king. Otomo directed Akira. This movie sounds extremely cool to anyone who likes Japanese legends. And I do.)

Thursday September 14, 2006
Jade Warrior, Antti-Jussi Annila, 2006 VARSITY 4 8:45 PM (Inspired by the Kalevala, this is a Finnish film with a Finn dude fighting an ancient Chinese demon. Helloooo martial arts epic set in Helsinki)

Friday September 15, 2006
The Banquet, Feng Xiaogang, 2006 ROY THOMSON HALL 6:30 PM (Okay, I suppose I don’t NEED to see this either, but it has Ziyi Zhang, and some swords, and a Shakespearean plot, and I’m in.)
The Magic Flute, Kenneth Branagh, 2006 VARSITY 8 8:30 PM (Branagh sucks for ditching Emma Thompson, but I like Opera, and I like historical romances, so there you have it)

Saturday September 16, 2006
The Banquet, Feng Xiaogang, 2006 VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN) 12:00 PM (if I can’t see this on Friday, maybe I’ll see it Saturday?)
Love and Other Disasters, Alek Keshishian, 2006 RYERSON 12:15 PM (Ooh! Ooh! A hidden chick-flick lovers gem! Brittany Murphy and Matthew Rhys, but but BUT also DAWN FRENCH. And some Orlando Bloom, for those that like that sort of thing…)
Macbeth, Geoffrey Wright, 2006 ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM 7:45 PM (Shakespeare done in old language with new guns, Aussie-rules gangsta-style. Sounds promising, no?)

You see what I mean? DO YOU SEE?!?! I can’t be watching this many movies in one week. I’ll go batty. (More batty.)

Well, I just finished my first ever “Bodyflow” class at Goodlife – it’s advertised as part Tai Chi, part yoga, and part pilates.

And I discovered I am a TOTAL YOGA SNOB.

It’s dreadful… I know it’s been over three years since I’ve seen the inside of a gym or a studio, and I’m completely out of shape, but the muscles, they remember. I was serious enough about yoga at one time in my life to be going upwards of four times a week to practice. I regularly did two-hour Ashtanga sessions at Downward Dog. I was seriously considering teacher training. I thought about opening my own ashram.

So you can imagine that doing a whole three sun salutations to the soothing sounds of Bryan Adams was not exactly my skeeze.

The teacher kept giving everything it’s English name, rather than the Sanskrit. I know, I know, people at a Goodlife do not really want to learn Sanskrit, they just want to get sweaty, but I am fairly certain everyone would have had just as good a time enjoying “Savasana” as they would being told to get into CORPSE POSE. Nobody cares if you call it Mountain pose, but it has a certain poetry if you say “Tadasana”. You don’t have to use it all the time, but it is part of the full yoga experience.

Also, oh my god the music. I really can’t do Warrior to shitty pop electronica. I just can’t. Sting is great, I love him, but I know for a freaking fact that he doesn’t do yoga to his own albums, so why should we? It should be a silent practice, so that you can listen to the sound of your breath, can hear your instructor, and can pay attention to what your body is telling you. It should not be the crackle and hiss of a badly positioned headset microphone, transmitted over loud speakers that are cranked up to 50 decibels just to be heard over the roar of the air conditioning(!) and the freaking Robbie Williams or whatever.

Air conditioning is also a no-no. Okay, people don’t enjoy sweating and straining in extreme heat, I got the memo. In fact, I think I wrote that memo. But yoga is about generating internal heat so as to enhance flexibility in the body and to improve circulation. There needs to be sweat in order to extract impurities. In a room maintained at a chilly 18 degrees, you will not be as bendy as you could ideally be if you were practicing without A/C, or even –perish the thought– in a heated room. Goodlife has obviously never heard of Bikram.

Okay, that’s mostly the end of my yoga snob rant. We’ll see if I can bring myself to go next week. I kind of feel like this class might undo all of my good habits if I keep taking it, but then again, I am too fucking lazy to drag my ass back south to Downward Dog for a proper workout on the weekend, so I guess I should take it where I can get it.

Namaste, all, and good night.