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Ugh, I am sick with a cold. It started creeping up yesterday and has hit me today. I probably won't teach my class tonight because the prospect of talking for two hours makes me feel exhausted right now. Fortunately, I have very little that needs to be done in the next few days. I did go to work yesterday, and went to a very good dance show on Monday, which I will write more about later.

I also watched The Corpse Bride yesterday. I thought it was really cute, but did not like it quite as much as a Nightmare Before Christmas.


I have mixed feelings about Pink's new video Stupid Girls , which mocks Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and the Olsen Twins. However, I think she has a point, and her parody of Jessica Simpson washing the car in daisy dukes is pretty funny.

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There's been a lot of talk about dance on this blog lately. Please bear with me as I talk about the show I went to on Monday. My friend Laura is a dancer. She was one of my roommates in Montreal, and she moved here about a year ago. I don't get to see her that often, but it's been nice to have her in the same city as me, since she is a wonderfully lovely person.

On Monday (which was also Laura's 27th birthday), I went to her dance show. She's taking a choreographing class and had to prepare a piece in about 15 hours. The six or seven pieces which were performed that night were all done in intense sessions. This was the public's first view of the pieces, and many big-name choreographers were invited to watch. As a result, Laura was understandably quite nervous.

The first piece was amazing. The audience entered the theatre to find three shirtless men lying in a circle on the floor. They started their piece as soon as we were all seated. The piece started with some deep breathing and floor based movement. I could see the bald head of one of the men, and the dreads of another. It was extremely sexual and to be honest, one of the sexiest pieces of performance art I've seen in a long while. They then got up and did some contact dance, dancing in a circle and moving in a masculine way. I don't know if it was the novelty of seeing the men dance, or their bodies, or the piece, but it was very, very hot. I didn't find any of the men attractive by themselves; it was just the movement of their bodies when they were dancing and possibly their backs in particular. I have a thing for backs.

Laura's piece was also very good. Her piece was called "transfer" and it was about daily movements, the kind of movements that we repeat, and transit. At one point, her dancers were on the Sky train and in another moment, they slipped onto the bus. She later told me that only one of her dancers had had any dance training, which had given her an extra challenge. I quite enjoyed her work.

Another enjoyable piece was called "Insect Lullaby". The dancers were dressed up to look like insects and moved in a buggy way. The choreographer of this piece was Laura's friend. I met her afterward and she was quite nice. However, she looked a lot like Allyson Hannigan so I had a hard time not staring at her.

I find that when I go to improv-based dance shows, I sometimes get very frustrated because I don't "get" the pieces. I go in expecting traditional style dance and then when I can't figure out the story, I get annoyed and hope that no one asks me what the pieces "mean" or what I got out of a particular piece. I also get annoyed by pieces when it seems like the dancers just spend the whole number pushing each other over to the sound of beeps and static. This show was not like that at all. There was only one piece that I really disliked, and on the whole, I really enjoyed the other numbers and the creativity.

Oscar babble

You can tell that I haven't been feeling well as it has taken me this long to write anything about the list of nominees.

I have several things to say-

1. Yay for the lack of "Memoirs of a Geisha"! After Zhang Ziyi was nominated for a Golden Globe, I was worried that the Academy would nominate her for Best Actress. That movie doesn't really deserve nominations, except in categories like costume, etc.

2. What happened to C.R.A.Z.Y? I thought that this would be a shoo-in for Best Foreign. Alas, I was proven wrong.

3. I was also proven wrong because I thought that "Jarhead" would be Oscar bait and it wasn't. I haven't seen the movie, but I just thought that it would have been one that would have gotten a lot of attention because of the cast and subject matter.

4. It was a good year for gays in the movies, which is awesome. My mother pointed out that this is directly against the current conservative climate in the United States. However, it does prove my theory that times of political repression can often help produce good art.

5. It was not a good year for women in the movies. There were very few movies with good, meaty female roles. (This is true of most years, but this year was really rather crappy) Generally, women were sidekicks in ensemble pieces. The only female driven movies that I can think of were "North Country" (which didn't stay in Vancouver very long, so I haven't seen it) and "Memoirs of a Geisha", which was kind of insulting. (Oh, and I guess "Mrs. Henderson") Okay, that's three now.

6. I'm one of those people who liked "Crash". I know a lot of people who didn't like it, but I know a lot of people who did like too.

7. I have no plans to see "Cinderella Man." In fact, I will not be seeing "Cinderella Man" or "Pride and Prejudice." I am tired of boxing and Russell Crowe, and I don't care for Jane Austen that much. If I watch "Pride and Prejudice", I plan to watch the BBC mini series with Colin Firth. And his shirt.

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I don't feel that I can make comments on all the best pictures or the screenplays as I haven't seen a lot of those movies yet. I do like seeing writers win things, so I enjoy the screenplay and adapted screenplay categories. I don't have a lot to say about sound editing etc, because those categories are not as exciting to me.

( Today I watched Hustle and Flow )

I must say that "It's hard out here for a pimp" is a catchy song and I was singing it for part of today. I'm curious to see how it will be performed at the ceremonies and if the singer will sing all the swears in the song.