The Tale of Desperaux

This past Saturday, the Vancouver Siggraph chapter hosted a charity film showing of The Tale of Desperaux, with all proceeds going to local food banks. Kyenta and I had both read Kate DiCamillo's book when it came out and were eager to see how it had been translated to film.

Luckily, most of the book's charm makes it through. The animation and look (by the folks at Framestore) are both suitably captivating, with a standout pseudo-2D style employed for Desperaux Tilling's flights of fancy.

The film stumbles on occasion. There are a few notable continuity problems where it feels like they had too much material and decided to drop important scenes. Also, I'm no book purist -- changes do need to be made when translating from one medium to another -- but a few of the alterations were rather jarring and unnecessary.

Overall, though, The Tale of Desperaux does entertain. It's a worthwhile fairytale film to watch this Christmas season.

The 10% Myth

A few months ago, I read Stephen King's Cell, his somewhat flawed take on the zombie genre.

Speaking in broad generalizations, once you get past the "grrr, argh, brains", zombie tales are allegorical in nature, whether it's consumerism, foreign policy, or the democratization of the media. Cell is no different. It takes the rather obvious premise of "cellphone users as zombies" and runs with it.

Overall, I think King did an OK job -- the zombies aren't really classic George Romero zombies; King injects enough of his own variations into the equation to keep you guessing. Sadly, the novel falls down when King tries to explain the cause and mechanics of the outbreak, and falls down hard. Technical plausibility has never been his strong suit. Given the story direction this was probably not possible, but I'd have preferred if he had left out most of the details completely.

One of those details is this: that humans only use 10% of their brain, and by extrapolation, that the other 90% is untapped potential just waiting to be unlocked. No one is sure exactly where this myth originated but there isn't any doubt that it's pretty widespread. It's most often used as evidence to advance claims that psychic powers are plausible.

I don't mind psychic abilities appearing in speculative fiction. Just figure out a different way of rationalizing it (assuming you bother to; it's not always necessary). Explicitly quoting the 10% myth breaks the suspension of disbelief--at least for me.

It's just not true.

The Armed Man

For Valentine's Day, Kyenta got us tickets to a performance of Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man. The concert was put on by the Vancouver Bach Choir at the Orpheum on March 15, 2008.

The show was a double bill. The Armed Man was preceded by the premiere performance of John Estacio's The Houses Stand Not Far Apart, which, though I applaud its anti-war theme, was a somewhat pedestrian piece overall. During the intermission I was hoping that The Armed Man wouldn't be in the same vein. Luckily for us, it wasn't.


The Armed Man is subtitled "A Mass for Peace", which is an apt summary. The piece is anti-war, and takes its structure from the Christian Mass, with a Kyrie, Sanctus, etc. Jenkins, however, doesn't restrict himself solely to Christian hymns, effectively blending in Muslim (the Adhaan, or Call to Prayers), Hindu (The Mahabharata), and Japanese (a Toge Sankichi poem) texts.

For me, the section that impacted me the most was definitely the "Call to Prayers (Adhaan)". We were seated in the centre section of the Orpheum's balcony with a great view of the orchestra and choir. They'd just finished performing "The Armed Man", the introductory section that opens the concert, and everyone had quieted down.

On the balcony to our right, a man dressed in black with a high collar, surrounded by a calm and serene air, stepped forward to the rail, closed his eyes and extended his arms. He then sang the Muslim Call to Prayers a capella, the way it's meant to be performed.

I managed to find the version of this song that comes on the official Armed Man CD, sung by Mohammed Gad.

For me, it doesn't quite capture the simplicity and melody of Hussein Janmohamed's performance. And though the Adhaan is sung from mosques by muezzins five times a day, every day, in Islamic communities the world over, I've never heard a more beautiful rendition than the one by Janmohamed that night.