It’s always roots versus ambition. Staying in one spot offers comfort and clarity, but can keep you mired, stuck. Ruts form. Ambition is the other side of the same coin, a scarier prospect where the risks and rewards are greater, if harder to attain. Black Mountain knows the ebb and flow of roots and ambition. The Vancouver rock outfit pays obvious homage to their roots, their sound anchored with a solid base coat of their rock god idols. But they, like fellow West Coast rockers Comets On Fire, similarly figured out what bands like Wolfmother and Jet can’t seem to grasp: that the base coat is just that; a little ambition is needed for the details. It’s appropriate then that bassist Matt Camirand and Black Mountain left home and roots behind and took the recording of their latest, Wilderness Heart, deep into Axl Rose’s “jungle.”

“In L.A., it was pretty heavy because we were recording at Sunset Sound Studios, and we had recorded there just to do one song previously. Doing a whole record there was pretty inspiring because the studio has been home to countless numbers of artists that all of us totally admire and worship,” Camirand says. The studio that would give shelter in part to the fugitive Rolling Stones for Exile on Main Street played host to Black Mountain, a band with deep roots in the lower mainland. Famous for members’ work in the downtown east side and the much overblown “Black Mountain Army,” their group of associated artists and acts, the trip down the coast to record was a significant venture. “Neil Young has recorded there and Fleetwood Mac recorded there. Innumerable artists have been there. The thing about it is that they haven’t changed the place very much since those days in the ‘70s and ‘60s.” The same wood paneling and equipment that gave birth to the sound Black Mountain makes sport out of improving upon was a good fit for the band. “The album was almost like recording at home.”

After the quiet roar induced by their eponymous debut and the tidal waves created by breakout LP In The Future, Camirand and bandmates Stephen McBean, Jeremy Schmidt, Amber Webber and Joshua Wells had more than a few big names interested in working with them. In part, they traveled to Los Angeles because “Dave Sardy had expressed pretty strong interest in producing the album.” D.Sardy (of LCD Soundsystem fame) and Randall Dunn (Kinski, Sun O)))) both took up production duties on the album. “Dave prefers to work at his home studio in L.A. and Sunset. He also has access to a shit-ton of old vintage equipment that are in miraculous condition.” The band has said in the past that they see production as another step in the creative process, but Camirand believes that learning to let go is a calculated risk. “That was stressful and it’s scary, but it’s exciting and we knew it would be like that.” Wilderness Heart represented a shift in philosophy with the recruiting of Sardy. “It was like, okay, let’s bring somebody in and shake shit up from the beginning. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, work with a producer, but never was able to afford to do it. It was a pretty big change but it was the only way to get good results half the time, is to take risks.” The result was a record that is unmistakably the product of strict creative control on the part of the band, but with the guidance of differently able hands. If In The Future was a hulking tool of heavy industry, Wilderness Heart is surely a precision timepiece; no less complicated, but cleaner and exacting.

The pressures of success can cause friction even in a group as practiced as Black Mountain. This pressure built ahead of the first attempt at recording In The Future, and caused a much-publicized hiatus that saw much of the original material scrapped in favour of new tracks. It’s a situation Camirand thinks they’ve overcome. “We planned ahead a little better, because we knew what was gonna happen. We knew we were gonna take a break just like last time. We kinda just set aside two months before. We went our separate ways to do a bunch of writing. Then we went to a rehearsal space every single day five days a week and spent the afternoon just kinda jamming and getting ideas.” The system they’ve created for themselves is one that Camirand believes has eliminated any expiratory date for the band. “I think it might have expired a while ago if we hadn’t figured out so quickly the routine we have for ourselves. I really like it. You can’t be stuck in a van and then a hotel room, then an airplane, then a green room at a venue with the same people over and over again, you know, for a year or two years on end without some kind of fighting. It just can’t happen.” He adds, “There’s five people in the van and it’s like I have four girlfriends.”

With competing side-projects creating the dynamic at work on Wilderness Heart – Blood Meridian, Lightning Dust and Pink Mountaintops to name a few – it would be no stretch to assume that creative competition causes a similar strain. Camirand is adamant they’re past such squabbling. “I think we’re all old enough now we’ve done this for a while that we realize that a great song, most great songs that you write, don’t include everybody equally, you know? There’s always someone taking the lead. There’s a give and take, like, we’re gonna write this song and maybe there will be no bass. You’re old enough to go, ‘Okay well that’s the best thing for the song’ and it’s not like a personal dig or whatever. You know on some other song you will be prominently displayed.” Despite a fierce inventiveness evident on a spin, the critical discourse on the band has been one of base lumping into genres, a chorus of “stoner rock” and “psych-rock” qualifications that fall painfully short. Camirand is unfazed, saying his “first instinct is to consider the people a little narrow minded.” He recognizes the nature of the beast, however. “It doesn’t really have anything to do with me. It’s not meant for me, those kind of comments.” As much as it is not tailored for him, Camirand cannot ignore the press. The deluge began far before the release of In The Future, but reached a critical mass after a track was included on the soundtrack for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. Ahead of Wilderness Heart, he’s started reading the band’s mounting press all over again. “I’m as excited as anyone to see if people like it.”

As a seeming result of stepping out of their comfort zone, Wilderness Heart is an evolution in the sound Black Mountain has harvested from their predecessors and cultivated into something unique. “It’s certainly the biggest leap we’ve taken in terms of songwriting and production and stuff,” says Camirand. Opening with the southern folk licks of “The Hair Song” and falling into a compelling groove with the brooding “Rollercoaster” and the insistent and powerful title track “Wilderness Heart,” the record sounds more vital and punchy than previous output. Its focused delivery omits any analog to the problematic (if unduly maligned) In The Future epic “Bright Lights.” Mid-album standout “Let Spirits Ride” is a dynamite piece of prog metal that should have Iron Maiden nervous. “That one almost didn’t make the record,” Camirand says. “It grew on me. It wasn’t my favourite track when we were recording but when we were mixing, it kinda jumped out and took on a new level.”

With the formula for band success working in his favour and time spent working with residents of the downtown east side, Matt Camirand is striking the proper balance between roots and ambition, and it shows on Wilderness Heart. “It’s really important for me, aside from the other bands, to step back from Black Mountain and go back to work in the mental health care industry. I like going back to the residents I’m working with who are all acid casualties from the ‘60s and are super stoked on Black Mountain. And you know that gets exhausting and irritating too and then it’s time to go back on the road again.

“I’m really lucky to have that opportunity to keep refreshing myself.”

“Kids in Toronto love music,” states Dan Werb, one half of the Toronto-based dance-rock band Woodhands. It’s an almost painfully obvious answer to an unlikely question: why is there so much good dance music coming out of southern Ontario? Werb tries to explain, saying, “They love to blog, they love to dress up, they love to party. They thought they loved indie rock but actually what they really wanted was to dance their fucking asses off.” Woodhands responded to that demand with a string of releases aimed squarely at those dancing asses, culminating in 2008’s Heart Attack and their newest this year, Remorescapade. Werb says that many of the dance acts together now came up in an indie rock world and saw a way to improve upon it. Despite some initial uncertainty, Werb thinks the success came from simply reaching the right number of people. “It was awkward at first but now that there’s a critical mass everyone is happy and satisfied.”

Woodhands stands out among a crop of peers with a hard-nosed propensity towards clear, punchy dance numbers that pop right off your speakers. While others are satisfied with fuzz and detachment, Werb and bandmate Paul Banwatt serve up crunchy guitars and tight dance beats, the latter courtesy of Banwatt, who also lends his services to similarly notable buzz band the Rural Alberta Advantage. Werb is aware of the cross contamination between the projects. “He often claims that he has a specific style of drumming that he takes with him to all the projects he’s working on. So even though the RAA is ostensibly a folk band, the drumming is totally dance-oriented. Check it out again; you’ll hear a ton of the dance influences in his drumming with the RAA.” While this is more than clear when comparing Woodhands tracks like “Dancer” and RAA track “Rush Apart,” the similarity is more obvious in the thrilling velocity shared by the two bands. While seemingly worlds apart, Banwatt’s talent links the two. “When you’re as good as Paul is at drums, you can basically do whatever the fuck you want whenever you want with whoever you want and it’ll sound amazing.”

A key skill for a dance rock band to have is the ability to transfer a certain amount of energy into whatever audience is presented to them. Inhibitions can only be brought down so far, something Woodhands seemed to learn when touring behind Heart Attack, writing their follow-up throughout. The result is an urgent and exciting work of pop that moves crowds, an effect that was crafted specifically. “They are definitely meant to hit hard live,” he says of their latest. While seemingly most at home in a sweaty, cramped bar or club, Woodhands has been popping up on outdoor stages at summer festivals for most of their career. It’s an environment that could shelve their imitable live presence, and is a risk Werb shows at least some concern for. “We love the festivals because we’re always making new fans and playing outdoors is so thrilling,” he says, adding, “We are torn though because our lasers don’t work as well outdoors and we do love our lasers.

“Did I mention our lasers? We have lasers.”

he Suburbs is an agonizing record. It’s agony to listen to and agony to ignore. For every moment you feel drawn to it, you have two of rage at the change of a formula that worked so well and one wondering whether Arcade Fire have improved upon it. Sandwiched between classics are songs sounding like single fodder, throw-aways padding what should have been Preakness in their Triple Crown. These stumbles may not matter.

For the most part, Win, Regine, and company seem at odds with the sweeping elegiacs that have thus far made up their fingerprint. They’re done with mini-epics and have moved onto a collection of cogent moments, leaving the album to be the singular experience, not single tracks. There are no lineal connections with their previous work, and though stompers “Month of May” and “City With No Children” channel “Antichrist Television Blues,” these references are passing. As such, comparisons have already been drawn to OK Computer. More poignant is the disparity between the latter album and Kid A. Little remains of the past, but it is unquestionably the work of them same band.

Bookending title tracks “The Suburbs” and “The Suburbs (continued)” give the album some narrative anchors, and discography highs “Empty Room” (sounding like a neon Bible b-side layered over grinding shoegaze, which is to say outstanding), and “Half Light II (No Celebration)” moderate missed opportunities in “Ready To Start” and “Deep Blue.” Only briefly do they abandon loneliness to revisit the apocalypse they’re so fond of writing about in “Suburban War” (with, again, reference to career best “Ocean of Noise.”) Contained in it’s a final movement as good as they’ve ever done.

Like the exurbs they discuss, The Suburbs is only frustrating and distant on first glance. Peering under a layer of static and despondence is a challenge with enough reward to merit the undertaking. Butler croons “The music divides/us into tribes,” something doubtless to happen among their fanbase. Their loss, it would seem.

Christopher Nolan might not be the best director of our time (he comes close), but he certainly is the loudest. Fashioning a strong relationship with Warner Bros. — owner of one of, if not the most effective marketing machines on the planet — Nolan is their newly-minted golden boy in a tenuous situation: we have been talking about Inception for what feels like forever. That amount of hype would bend and break most films, but Nolan, no doubt steeled by helming one of the largest film franchises ever in Batman, just internalized that pressure and made what might be his masterpiece.

Inception is about dreams — the creation of dreams, the manipulation of dreams, and how those dreams can shake and shape us. Leonardo DiCaprio is Dominic Cobb, an extractor of the highest order. He can walk into your brain, steal an idea, and leave without a trace, all while you sleep. When Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe) hires them to leave a trace via a near impossible process called “inception,” the rewards outweigh the risk. “Don’t think about elephants. Now, what are you thinking about?” remarks Cobb’s partner Arthur, played to perfection by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Brick, 500 Days of Summer), explaining how true inspiration is impossible to fake. Christopher Nolan seems to agree.

What follows is a delirious trip into multiple planes of reality, a mind-melter that for better or worse will conjure memories of the recent Shutter Island. Cobb enlists the help of a new architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page of Juno, Hard Candy, and Trailer Park Boys fame) and a forger, Eames (Tom Hardy of Bronson, Layer Cake, and Scenes of a Sexual Nature) to break into Cillian Murphy’s (28 Days Later, Sunshine) dreams and convince him to break up an energy conglomerate founded by his dying father.

Inception is, unequivocally, this summer’s best movie (so far, that is — early reports call Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World a contender). It’s a dense, thrilling, highly creative film that gives the finger to “dumb fun” films in style. It’s the best money you can spend at a theater right now.

Comparisons to Fellini’s 8 1/2 will abound as it seems as likely an allegory for the filmmaking process as it is a straightforward action picture. Debate roars over the finer points of the film’s message, forcing attentive viewers to discuss the nature of reality, perception, and obsession at length. No matter the answers to the many questions it raises, that it elicits a response other than “that was crap,” makes it stand head and shoulders above this season’s crop.

While exceptional, Inception is not perfect. Complaints are similar to Nolan’s other offerings. The script is Christopher’s baby, with rewrites extending into the early part of the decade. The absence of writing partner and brother Jonathan Nolan is felt in the terse and at times oppressively serious tone of the film. There are a few moments of great levity, but they are few and far between. This becomes an issue during the trademark Nolan, needfully long exposition: gobs of information force-fed (albeit in an exciting manner) to an audience just to enable their enjoyment of the explosive third act. He makes films like a prog-rock song — bounding gallops out of the gate, settling into a lengthy digression on why he is more brilliant than you, frequent bursts of excitement through the fog and an end garnished with fireworks. The Mars Volta should be jealous.

That said, Inception so ably sucks you in you’ll barely notice the cold characterization and minor issues it has. From zero-gravity acrobatics to a homicidal Marion Cotillard flowing through Cobb’s dreams like an assassin, Inception lives up to every bit of hype.

At one point in the film, Ariadne remarks how building a dream is “less about the visual and more about the feel of the dream.” She wonders what happens when she alters the physics of the dream world. That world then literally flips upside down, a city folding onto itself, all spectacle and shock. Looking at what she has done, she says, “it sure is something, isn’t it?” to a similarly moved Cobb. “Yes it is,” he responds quietly. It sure is, Mr. Nolan.

I Am Love will be one of the best films of the year that no one will watch. It has a lot going against it, Oscar-winning lead Tilda Swinton or no. It’s entirely in Italian (Swinton learned to speak the language with a character-specific Russian accent). It’s a two-hour hard drama, devoid of levity, and North American censors are notoriously squeamish when it comes to shots of female genitalia. Yes, shots — plural. It’s this abandon and seeming disregard for North American box office take that makes I Am Love not only a shocking achievement, but one of the most fearless dramatic films in years.

The film tells the story of Emma Recchi, an immigrant inductee into the powerful Recchi family of Italian aristocrats. Embarrassingly wealthy owing to a thriving textile concern, the film apes Tennessee Williams and joins them celebrating the birthday of the family patriarch who finds himself approaching death. While at this point it could easily devolve into a straightforward heir battle, the thread of the family’s future only serves as a frame to describe a situation where Swinton’s Emma will never belong. As her utility to her husband ends at her uterus, a chance encounter with her son’s chef friend draws her slowly into an affair. It’s a tale of life, death, renewal, and stumbling forward, clothed or not.

Director Luca Guadagnino has put together an impressive package with his biggest production to date. His direction of frequent collaborator Swinton is expertly done, an advantageous situation given that she forms the centre of gravity for the film. There is nearly nothing else in the film. I Am Love hangs its entire being onto her capable, angular shoulders and she responds to the weight expertly. His mastery of shot choice and his clear respect for cinematography makes I Am Love an absolute treat to look at, inspiring an instant desire to catch it again on Blu-ray (an odd trait for such a tense dramatic work). In another life, Guadagnino could direct food commercials: a good portion of this film imbues sensuality into food and cooking. This is a skill that most directors wish they could attach to their love scenes.

The script is incredibly strong, juxtaposing Emma’s lovers expertly. Her husband pointedly clothes her, zipping a dress, and clasping bracelets and other expensive armour, while her lover unwraps her like a present for the world and the audience to see and admire. In an effort to help along her journey into adultery, Emma stalks her prey like Gatsby (that is to say with class, not the creepy kind of stalking). Here, Swinton masterfully introducing a girlish fluster into her encounters. Sub-plots about another unwelcome inductee include her son’s fiancée, and the plans to sell the family business to foreign concerns at the cost of the company’s humanity weave into the narrative with ease. The affair unfolds with shades of Dawson’s Creek, the “will-they or won’t-they” factor becoming stifling right before its logical release (which sets up a hilarious visual gag that may be the film’s only funny moment). The unpredictable pacing of the film — plodding, with sudden octane infusions — suits the unpredictable nature sudden, traumatic family events, and sets up a climax that will knock you flat.

While it has flaws, they are nitpicks at best. A sub-plot regarding Emma’s daughter coming out as homosexual is tainted by the unintentionally hilarious choice she makes to cut her hair short, a cliché obviously meant to compare with her mother’s similar choice upon deciding to divorce her husband. Similarly, Guadagnino’s choice to make the face of the antagonist attempting to purchase and corrupt the family business an American Sikh is a blunt and artless comment on the changing economic and social face of the United Kingdom and the European Union. It’s a vaguely racist moment that comes from nearly nowhere. Combine those with what amounts to a huge amount of “Italy porn” — lavish shots boasting the natural beauty of the Italian landscape — and it results in comparatively minor gripes about a solid film.

I Am Love will have nearly no domestic impact commercially, but will continue the Oscar tradition of populating the “Best Foreign Film” category with some of the best work no one cares about until they get a statue. Swinton keeps marching quietly forward in her campaign to be regarded as one of the best actresses of her time with this challenging, awe-inspiring work she carries effortlessly. If she hasn’t already earned a star on the Walk of Fame, this will probably do it.

M.Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender blows.

But seriously folks, to talk about this film is to talk exclusively about its utter failure. By now the entire planet has come down on Shyamalan and is loudly plotting his violent demise, both for committing a Hague convention-worthy crime against filmmaking and for the full-ceremony desecration of a franchise that many have strong feelings for. Those attached to both the series and to good filmmaking are going to be reaching for the nearest halberd and dialing for airline tickets post-haste.

Avatar: The Last Airbender was a series on Nickelodeon that ran for three seasons. While aimed at 10 to 14-year-olds, it is easiest to categorize the achievement of co-creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko (and head writer Aaron Ehasz) as a kind of small-screen Pixar. While aiming at a young demographic, they created a series that is not only completely entertaining, but empirically well made. Between its canny sense of humour, outstanding character work, and grand scale, it’s a fantasy series that not only deserves the title of Tolkien-esque, but demands it. Shyamalan managed to take something that would have been fine as a word for word reenactment with real people and sucked every ounce of life from it. It’s art murder and he is a criminal.

The Last Airbender tells the story of Aang (said like “hang,” which the director seemed to miss), a 12-year-old airbender monk born as the latest incarnation of a super-being that can manipulate, or “bend” all four elements — earth, fire, water, and air. Told far before his maturity level could have allowed him to understand his responsibility and rushed due to a worldwide military struggle, the plot finds its most ready analogs in stories of Superman and Jesus Christ: what did these messianic figures do before they became saviours? While that question is mostly understood with those two examples (according to Superman: Birthright, saved oppressed Africans to impress a girl and none of your God damned business, respectively), the original Nickelodeon series speaks to its audience by admitting the imperfections of his humanity. Aang ran away, and when he came back, he just wanted to have fun, be a kid, fall in love, and grow up. What follows is a painfully American tale, Aang bootstrapping himself to greatness with the help of his friend Sokka (said like the foot garment, which Shyamalan got wrong too) and primary love interest Kitara. While his birth had a factor in his greatness, it is a story of learning, failure, and a willingness to follow the structure of the original Star Wars trilogy almost exactly. It is also some of the best television of the last decade, and certainly a contender for best children’s show ever. I have to make all this painfully clear to explain the colossal failure Shyamalan’s adaptation is.

The film has no heart. The characters have no soul. There is not a single humorous moment in the live-action version of a show that is more than half comedy. The action is muddy and poorly shot. The romantic angle that dominates the story is castrated and non-existent. The script sounds like it was written by Dr. Nick Riviera, or maybe Michael Bay after a stroke. Any talent Shyamalan has as a visual artist (and he does, though that talent is buried time and time again under everything else being terrible) is buried by everything else being terrible. It’s an insulting, witless, and unacceptably bad interpretation of something great. While it could be argued that it’s difficult to condense eight hours of the first season into a feature film, there wasn’t even an obvious attempt. Shyamalan cut this one down to a mercifully short hour and a half, though I doubt it was his idea.

The Last Airbender possibly represents the end of big studio franchise starters, and not a moment too soon. Instead of deigning to the thoughts and experience of the creators and director (M.Night being an unabashed fanboy of the original series), the finished product seems like it took every note given by a suit with no experience with the material as gospel. If the original leads were mostly non-white, pretty much a Tibetan monk and some Inuit (they were), make them white. Villains are white? Make them brown. Heavy overtones of Eastern philosophy and religion? Soccer moms do tai chi, just make them do that. Then, because unrelenting grit is the current tone du jour, don’t include a single moment of levity. Instead of exploring the complexities of adolescence, just hire Industrial Light and Magic to make things look pretty (they don’t). Slap some of that terrible post-production 3-D on there to artificially inflate the opening weekend take. That’ll teach them to be optimistic.

The Last Airbender is the worst film to come out in a summer season full of total crap, and I doubt even Step Up 3-D could be worse. If it has a single success, perhaps it will become a silver bullet killing three awful things: adaptations without creator controls, cynical use of awful 3-D, and the career of M.Night Shyamalan. Like an abused spouse, this is it for me, M.Night. Cut all contact, delete from Facebook, hit the gym.

t’s a cold, grey expanse. The sun rarely rises very far over the horizon and thick fog sometimes hangs like a veil over its entirety. You may go days without seeing a familiar face. The hard ground lets little grow, making the prospect of finding food a difficult notion at times. The people who love it stay and make it work, but time and change have driven as many away as it’s attracted. Man and beast alike struggle to adapt. Also, seemingly no one will let you use their phone. Stuck on SFU’s Burnaby campus with a dead mobile, student Robert Lutener plugs money into a payphone to answer a few questions about his award-winning documentary, Up North, a treatise on the effects of rapid change on one of the world’s most fragile social and environmental ecosystems.

“Up North is a film that documents the social, cultural, economic, and linguistic change in Canada’s Arctic,” says Lutener. He, along with collaborators Drew McIntosh and Aaron Bocanegra, packed a van and headed north from Edmonton, Alberta with a camera in tow to document a region he calls “a magnifying glass for how change affects human beings and the environment around them.” Through interviews with locals — community leaders, elders, artists — Lutener and company constructed an oral record of the Canadian North. “We wanted to let them tell the story of the North in their own words, as opposed to setting out with our own story. We wanted the people who populated [the North] to speak for themselves.” The result was a feature-length documentary that won an award for Best Art Documentary at the Mountain Film Festival in Colorado.

While taking the structure of an oral history, Lutener insists Up North is first and foremost a documentary. Exploring rapid and fundamental change in progress and being invited into their private lives, including the Council of the Yukon First Nations General Assembly and being allowed to document those proceedings were, for Lutener, “an incredibly humbling and powerful experience.” The lives of First Nations residents factors heavily into Up North’s observations, documenting “their reclaiming of their political and civil destiny.” From conversations with survivors of residential schools and Nation elders familiar with the Canadian government’s attitudes and policies governing the area, Up North paints a living portrait of the “past half century and beyond.”

“We knew there was a story up there, but we didn’t know what it would be,” he says, but describing how a lack of a political bent or message from the outset enabled the North to find them, not the other way around. “We discovered that much of the cultural impacts of development . . . has had a significant impact that was completely unexpected.” It was a life-altering experience for Lutener. “I cannot express the gratitude that I have for the people that invited us into their homes and their lives and their history.”

The enthusiasm to participate spanned their journey and came in the unlikeliest of places. “We were crossing the delta on a ferry and we met this woman, Kerry. She had her motor home with her husband and was selling snacks. She came out and asked us what we were doing and we told her and she said ‘Well I’ll talk, won’t I?’ looking at her husband. He says ‘oh yeah, you will!’. We were given the most amazing . . . to me one of the most important parts of the entire film.” Using the lens of her experience to describe what has happened to her homeland, her contribution is a microcosm for the film and an emotional peak in documentary with many such moments. The destruction of her way of life weighs heavily on Lutener, a personal anger that doesn’t detract from the objectivity of the film. “It’s a heinous injustice on a grand scale. It’s remarkably dreadful. The last residential school in this country closed in 1996. An apology and some cheques don’t necessarily equate justice. But a more determined and courageous group of people I have never met in my life.”

The film begins with a lengthy calculation of the carbon footprint inflicted by the production, and while mindful that a discussion of the Arctic usually finds its foundations in discourse on global warming, Lutener is emphatic about the lack of an environmental bias. “It’s up to the viewer, I think. We were asked the question on a continual basis, people asked us ‘What’s the bias?’, and the answer was always ‘Well, it’s your bias’.” Lutener hopes that the film can be used to make people better informed about change in the North and the world.

Armed with little but the money in their pockets and camping gear in a temperamental minivan, Up North succeeds in being a story of parallel journeys, the change evident in both those filmed and filming. It’s a compelling look at Canada’s uncertain northern land mass. Like Klondike forays into the Yukon, Lutener says the experience was well worth its trials. “We pretty much went out there blind, and we came out with gold.”

Sled Island makes no sense really. I had a lot of fun living in Calgary, but for most people, the city is a “wasteland” (to quote Japandroids), a partially deserved qualification. But for a weekend in July, it’s the home of arguably the best music festival in the Pacific Northwest, if not the entire West Coast. Plus it gives me an excuse to eat my parent’s food for a weekend.

What I Saw, And How Good It Was (in chronological order, starting Thursday afternoon):

Hot Panda: Ahead of The Pack A.D., these guys played a great set and seemed like they were having a great time. They were terrific to open up my weekend with and I look forward to checking out their stuff. B+

The Pack A.D: Good Lord I want to bottle their live show and sell it. They are definitely one of the most dynamic two-pieces I have ever seen play. It never seems theatrical, but you can’t help but just watch them beat the shit out of their instruments and wind everybody up. The desecration of a Nardwuar pinata helped too. A

Mini Mansions: These guys put on a good show, but seemed a little misplaced. I think putting them after The Posies and before Deerhoof would have been a better cleanser, priming us for weirdness. B

Women: I never really got into their recorded stuff. It doesn’t really move me. That’s why I’m continually surprised at how much I enjoy their stuff live. Unfortunately, the plague of inappropriate moshing continues in Calgary. No sense of history, I suppose. The violence killed punk and is what makes metal so scary to people. I’m fine with physicality, but this was a kind of shit that was just testosterone, looking for an altercation, shrugging and yelling “just tryin’ to have a good time, bro” when somebody is pissed that you’re mashing the ribs of his girlfriend into a pulp into the monitors. That really negative atmosphere was killing the energy in the room, and was expertly deflated by the band with only four words: “Hey, keep it positive”. I couldn’t have put it better myself. A-

The Posies: Consummate professionals that deflected a couple of drunk fellows telling them they were “totally sweet” after every single song. Their brand of 90’s pop rock was great, but went on about 20 minutes too long. Brevity is the better part of wit, boys, and serves the velocity of your music better. B

Deerhoof: Everything I could have wanted out of a band I have longed to see live. Opener “Basketball Get Your Groove Back” was outstanding, and their drummer is one of the weirdest, most talented musicians working today. He stands out in a group that is entirely, massively good at what they do. Awesome. A+

Fucked Up: Opened the mainstage on Friday, but I couldn’t see them. I had to go home (all the way south on the train) to take my DSLR camera back to my vehicle. With the little shitty kit lens I brought, it was hardly professional, boys. When everyone and their dog has a 500D, when do they cease being “professional”? It’s a shitty rule that plagues all modern festivals, really. “Just take it back to your car”, said the security guard who would pat-search me about 30 times over two days. That’ll learn you to take transit in this town, boy. -

Why?: This was my first real introduction to this band. I heard some of their stuff before, but hadn’t sat down with an album yet. Yoni Wolf is now quickly becoming one of my favorite lyricists since Stephen Merritt. A-

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists: A band I respect dearly but know people who love them far more than I do. A great, energetic set that told the rainclouds gathering to fuck off…and they did! A pretty neat trick. Along with a great rendition of “Sons of Cain”, I was pretty satisfied. A-

The Thermals: I have been aware of this band longer than I care to remember, but they have never really done it for me. I usually tune out after a couple of tracks. Their live show is a marked improvement, but they were flanked by way more exciting bands. B-

Built To Spill: With Muse and Phoenix, they complete a triumvirate of big bands I just don’t “get”. I’m sure they’re great, and I have heard some stuff I like, but people whose opinion I value highly rave about them. And I don’t get it. I hope to someday, and until then I’ll reserve judgement.

Girl Talk: Don’t put baby in a corner. Don’t put Girl Talk outside, in sunlight. Sweaty, cramped, dark bars are his arena. Keep him there. C

Woodhands: Totally awesome. Finished out the set with “Dancer”, the female vocals filled in falsetto from a dude. It was nearly perfect. A

Cex: Didn’t really come to play and drove a ton of the crowd to tables for drinks and food to refuel. I heard scattered reports of a real disconnect between the members onstage and general apathy. I can’t comment on those rumors, as I headed for tables for drinks and food to refuel. I could hear them just fine, though. C

Whomadewho: The Show of the Show. Absolutely incredible. The best thing out of Denmark since Lego, said a dude on Twitter. I’m inclined to agree. I would pay a great deal of dollars to see them again, immediately. A+

!!!: Commented that they never had to follow an act so good. I felt for them, as the brand of dance-rock they helped invent just seemed laid back next to the powerhouse performance of Whomadewho. Still pretty great though. A-

A band including a festival organizer guy whose name I cannot recall: They were basically just screwing around on stage with instruments. It was pretty neat. B-

Black Lips: A surprisingly tame set by these guys, notorious for urinating on…most things, really. There was a rogue firework that went off from the stage, but other than that, they just leaned on a good stable of songs. Not a band I would put on an outdoor stage. B-

The Bronx: I really wanted more mariachi. Sigh. C

NoMeansNo: No. C-

Big Business: The mainstage on Saturday was packed to the gills with this aged sort of punk and soft metal. This was likely to serve as an appropriate opener for Melvins and Dinosaur Jr., but was really underwhelming. The whole day sounded like one extended power chord. C

Melvins: Pretty glad I got to see these guys. They put on a great set (if somewhat short) and it oddly had the most dimension out of everything on the mainstage that day. It injected some energy back into the proceedings, to be sure… A-

Hot Water Music:…only to have it sucked out again by more of the same. B-

Dinosaur Jr.: A good set somewhat marred by a couple of douchebags near me at the fence who were really stoked that they could see J. Mascis. “Hey! Hey! Hey J! We see you man! We see you! You are there playing music! You are J! Woo! Hello! Hello! I need attention from a paternal figure! Hello!” It was pretty painful. Way to make us look stupid, guys. A-

White Lung: Continuing a fairly aggressive, punk trend in the day, but in a good way. This was a first listen for me, but I was pretty impressed. Vocals, guitar work and drums were all really tight, and I look forward to seeing them on bigger stages next year. B+

No Age: A very cool show with, packing in a ton of songs in a short time. Very glad to have got to this one. A

GZA: Didn’t get to see much of GZA as it was standing room only (and by that, I mean on top of tables at the Legion). I heard a bunch though and it sounded cool. Everyone said it was a good time, but I can’t help but think we will probably lose the Legion as a venue for next year because of it. The amount of bottles just thrown on the ground (and broken) was something definitely not present in previous years (that I can remember, through the haze). The clean up would have taken hours, and we will have to see if the staff thinks it was worth it. Fingers crossed. -

Fucked Up: They played my fave, “I Hate Summer”. One of the best live bands to come out of this country, and probably Sled Island’s biggest cheerleaders. Hell of a way to finish out the weekend. A

This year’s Sled Island was a mixed bag, and probably the most hit and miss of the three I have attended. A ton a good times to be had though, and the free Dr. Pepper made for good breakfast. I give the whole thing a B+ (2008 being an A- and 2009 being an A).

Bands I Would Have Liked To Have Seen:

Half of Sled Island is regretfully missing a ton of great bands. It’s an overabundance of wealth, sometimes. I wish I hadn’t missed these.

Apollo Ghosts: Alex Hudson is going to murder me if I don’t see these guys soon.

Hard Drugs

Cheeseburger

Golden Triangles

Les Savy Fav

Gobble Gobble

Tyvek

Turbo Fruits

Shout Out Out Out Out

Quintron + Miss Pussycat

Myths

The Donkeys

The Dudes

SSRI’s

Ramblin’ Ambassadors

Woodpigeon: first Sled Island having not done so

Ty Segall

Chain and the Gang

North of America

Also: I hope that girl who had her shoes stolen got them back. Not cool.

The problem with tributes and spinoffs is the added challenge of anyone organizing one to convince a person that their time and money is better spent on the derivative work than on the source. Star Wars in Concert tries to do that with an art form that has become as niche as it gets. Travelling with a full orchestra and outfitting GM Place with a set of giant screens to display appropriate montages from the films their music is taken from, the concert series is a compelling distraction but falls short of satisfying your Star Wars itch.

Star Wars is notable for many reasons, but the scores by John Williams are placed front and centre for this event. While some scores sit idle in the background of movies, it’s hard to imagine Star Wars being what it is today without the evocative sounds accompanying the action. Indeed, Williams’ contributions to the two trilogies are likely the most memorable suites in film history, and while others have gained similar notoriety (Vangelis for Blade Runner, Clint Mansell for Requiem for a Dream, John Murphy for Sunshine), none have the breadth to encourage a stadium event. From the “Imperial March” to the iconic Star Wars main theme, the songs he created have become shorthand for cinematic musical achievement.

Star Wars in Concert does its best to do justice to that legacy, and musically does so in spades. The orchestra travelling with the show put on pitch perfect renditions of every moment from the films. One wonders if any of the people (and children in incredible numbers) in attendance would ever experience a full symphony in their lives were it not for the films attached, so it’s a credit to the music’s popularity that it can pull in an unlikely crowd.

Stellar band aside, the production had its flaws. Ticket prices were on the high side ($41 for one adult) putting it fairly out of reach for students, and the exhibit of classic costumes and props were sparse, hardly justifying the premium. Anthony Daniels (the voice of C-3PO) acted as narrator and host for the evening, but his overenthusiasm bordered on mugging the entire night. Instead of providing any insight into the scores or the films, he opted instead for grandiose stroking of their brilliance, replete with sweeping physical gestures and out-of-place, “are you ready to rock?”-type pump ups for the audience. What’s worse is that the program ran canonically through the films, starting with The Phantom Menace. It broke off occasionally to play themes associated with various characters (Anakin and Padme, R2D2, and C-3PO, Luke on Dagobah), ignoring the obvious choice to put the brilliant Revenge of the Sith duel suite at any sort of climax and burying the series’ best musical moment. The montages played behind the orchestra simply made you want to go watch the movies, a problematic evocation as the music was already ripped from context. There was little to argue you should be there and not a home with a stack of DVDs.

Star Wars in Concert is a brilliant idea in theory, but the entire package cannot justify the ticket price. For half the price, it would have been incredible.

One of the best parts of Year of the Carnivore is the poster. A scene illustrated by accomplished Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown (Ed The Happy Clown, Louis Riel), it’s not only excellently realized, but philosophically appropriate. Where Brown took a comic strip biography about Louis Riel and made it into a subtle look into the nature of that figure’s neurosis and psychology, Vancouver filmmaker Sook-Yin Lee (Shortbus) makes similar observations about Sammy Smalls (Cristin Millioti). Like a twee and twenty-something answer to 2007’s Young People Fucking, Year of the Carnivore explores the nature of adversarial sexuality at an awkward stage of adulthood and at the same time makes a statement about the current state of Canadian film art. The result, however, is almost as confused as its main character.

Sammy Smalls lost partial use of her leg fighting cancer as a child. Her overbearing narcissist mother and weakling father want her to quit her job as a grocery store “detective,” thinking that running down shoplifters stealing flank steaks is too dangerous for someone of her stature. The film’s runtime is preoccupied with Sammy getting “experienced.” That is, she hops from one awkward sexual encounter to the next in the hopes of getting good enough to impress a boy, Eugene (Mark Rendall). While these encounters are filmed in an attempt at humour, they’re incredibly hard to watch and leave you wanting to give Sammy a shake and ask her what the hell she is thinking. While this could be leveraged as good drama, it’s instead an air ball lobbed and missing its target through an unfocused script. If the aim was to instill Sammy’s sense of frustration onto the audience, it’s mission accomplished.

To be blunt, Cristin Millioti deserves to be a star. The amount of humanity and depth she gives to an uneasily written character is admirable and to not walk out of the theater impressed with her performance would be impossible. Her supporting cast (including Will Sasso) are fairly strong, but Sammy Smalls is a star-making role. It is unfortunate then, that the script and film as a whole (as beautifully shot as it is) do not elevate a commendable performance.

Sook-Yin Lee made waves a while back for taking part in sexual acts on film in Shortbus, an act that royally irked her employers at the CBC and made her a news story for a couple of months. But while that film took all the eroticism out of sex as a stated goal to explore sex-as-mechanics, Year of the Carnivore does the same with a shudder-inducing lack of compassion, a detachment that edges on sociopathy. Each of the characters operates out of a strange, intense selfishness that totally breaks any connection with the audience and shatters the suspension of disbelief with uncomfortable scoffs. Its disconnect with actual sexual relations between young people is disturbing and its attempts to be iconoclastic take priority over being entertaining. Most egregious is a scene that is tantamount to depicted rape, but its implication is that if a female is the aggressor, the male will just enjoy it. Were this reversed, the backlash would be deafening. While the film makes a half-assed attempt to call this action immoral, it seems to do so with fingers crossed behind its back, some dialogue thick with shallow psychoanalysis a stopgap for actual emotion.

Did I say scene? I meant scenes. Plural. In an attempt to be unique and edgy, it comes off as creepy and objectionable. With each scene of torrid sexuality, a clear attempt is made for a condom to be applied. This restraint and modesty is horribly Canadian and turns the confusion of youth into the measured mistakes of an adult. It’s personally destructive performance art, the conscious martyrdom of Sammy Smalls. This is a Woody Allen film, courtesy of the new millennium. Be afraid.

It seems impossible for a film to fail with such an interesting leading lady, but Year of the Carnivore does. It tries to preach a muddled philosophy (I still can’t figure out what it was trying to tell me. Convenience conquers love? Change yourself to gain the love of others? I have no idea) and attempts to be an uplifting tale of a young woman exploring her sexuality, but instead rings out like an exploitative farce. I’ve never wanted to love a film more, and have never been so sad to see one fall short.