For Fuck's Sake

I have been trying to locate the latest issue of Metropolis during my lunch break and it looks like an impossible task.



Don't get me wrong - I looked in all the right places. There are three - THREE !! - shopping centers around the area, and they're all linked by the underground aisles of the McGill station : Eaton Center, Les Ailes Complex & Promenades de la Cathédrale. In a media-dominated world, however, nobody sees fit to offer customers a proper magazine store.

There used to be a Maison de la Presse Internationale across the street on Ste-Catherine but it was turned into a sports shoes palace two years ago. And the Indigo on McGill College isn't what I'd call well stacked in architectural magazines...

So I'm screwed, and I'll have to hunt the Metropolis down like a rarity, which it is not. Everybody should adopt an issue.

*

Laurent Garnier is in town tonight, at Parking's Overdose night, and I don't feel like going. Am I a monster ?



I think I really need some sleep and quietness. Until May 31st, clubs will always have this bleak appeal to me, the realisation that it will be so much better afterwards. No more smelly clothes, no more pulmonary diseases floating around me... No more cigarette burns on my arms on the dancefloor... No more drunks lightning up one cigarette after the other as if it was oxygen...

Garnier is the godfather of French techno, but sometimes his tastes are a bit too techno-ish for me, as a matter of fact. I'll sit back, relax, listen to loud music alone with my thoughts, and watch a movie or two. Nothing better than a big nothing, sometimes.

*

Went to Boîte Noire yesterday and rented some flicks. Watched LORD OF WAR, a Nicholas Cage vehicle that reminds us of any "rise and fall" movie such as BLOW or other of its kind. It rather is a chronicle, with various events in an arm dealer's life, with over-the-rop visuals, over-dramatic twists & turns, and Cage talking directly in the camera (Steve Coogan style) and narrating over the scenes in a witty voice-over.



Jared Leto plays his junkie brother, with no depth at all, and in fact all the other characters feel empty, like accessories put there so all the pieces of the improbable story fit. Cage himself cannot even give us a slight idea of the internal torments of his character. Instead, he serves us one-liners and his usual looks, unaffected by the chaos and death surrounding him. And the fact that this very same chaos and death is represented so lightly, due to some directional choices, made me scratch my head in dismay.

The emphasis that is put on telling the story puts everything else behind. People die a lot and nobody seems to care. And this violence is presented to us in such a way, that we don't care either.

The only part that made me laugh out loud was at the end, when these words appeared in the screen : "This story is based on actual events".

How much of a cheat, and intellectual imposture, can a Hollywood movie be ?