for 16 December 1997. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Shut Up & Kiss Me

"... where your reward for
reading three pages of
Courtney Weaver's
General-Foods-
International-Coffees dialog
would be a nude shot?"

Hey, the French, ahead of the
Americans in things sexy, as
you point out earlier, have
already gotten around to
this. They have
music-video/strip shows where
the reward for watching a
video is another piece of
clothing removed from the
hosts' bodies.

Sometimes Suck is the 20th
century's Jules Verne, and
sometimes they're just
Americans' JV.

Nicolas Dade

I believe MTV's new ratings
gambit is to have Matt
Pinfield do the same thing.

Mostly Suck is America's
Louis Jourdan - only prissier
and more effete.

Bartel

My Dearest Darcy,

While Kieslowski's Red
certainly had a bit of the
surveillance "bug" to it,
this is no reason to suggest
that the whole of the trilogy
"depicted a united Europe
attaining peace through
non-stop, pointless
surveillance." This is a
serious misreading.
Kieslowski embraced broad
themes in his work and indeed
thought nothing of embodying
the fate of nations in his
characters. And it is indeed
true that a unified Europe
will probably be a massive
cross-surveillance project,
but it doesn't follow this is
Kieslowski's point and I
don't believe the facts of
the film bear this out. Where
in Blue is there a
surveillance? In White?

Just asking,

Brian Mahoney

You give us hope. We run a
barely intelligible story as
window dressing for some
blatant click panders, and
the one element you seize on
is French cinema!
Formidable!

That "embraced broad themes
in his work" business sounds
suspiciously like critical
white noise, but in this case
it's true. Very quickly: In
Blue, the piece of music
Juliette Binoche's dead
husband had been working on
was a symphony or something
in honor of the United
Europe. In White, Karol
Karol, who is trying to keep
his international marriage
together, becomes a model
nouveau riche in
post-communist Poland. And in
Red, which ties all three
movies together (through an
event which occurs during a
crossing of the English
Channel), there are
suggestions of the fall of
communism (the giant red
poster of Irene Jacob), hints
at European Union (the
fictitious "Van den
Budenmeyer" symphony),
reminders of how small the
individual European nations
are (the "personal weather
reports" gimmick), and a
whiff of internationalism
generally (the film is set in
Geneva). All three movies are
saturated with the idea of
European unification, or at
least of a post-Cold War
continent, and the
surveillance theme in Red
wraps it all up.

Nobody said that's the whole
point of these movies, or
even that these movies have a
single Point. This is art,
son, not TV.

BarTel

Monster Mash

Ouch!

Didn't anyone ever teach you
not to go stomping on the
moral high ground? It's shaky
enough without throwing
inconsequential things like
thought and consistency into
the mix. Next thing you know,
people are going to start
telling us that we should
punish children (or their
Parental Failures) severely
for little things like murder
and rape. Then what? We'll
lose our freedom to be
violent offenders, and God
forbid, even to commit
nonviolent crimes like theft
and fraud! Leave our poor
embattled moral majority
alone, misbegotten sinner.
There is no room in Goodness
for contemplation - Why do
you think they call it Blind
Faith?

Did I mention that I agree
with you?

Jason Baldwin
Picking Glass Flowers with
Hands of Stone

He agrees! Woohoo!

Sucksters

Building Condo Developments
on Moral High Ground

Shut Up & Kiss Me

Pretty insightful, but a
seemingly obvious connection
was missed: zine culture. A
great many zines (best
example I can think of being
White Bread) are diary
exchanges - showing the banal
personal details that aren't
so revealing (given the
reader's usual lack of
context) but by themselves
are both titillating and
relevant. Having read an
article about Jennicam in the
Globe & Mail, I checked
it out and found it weirdly
like looking into a mirror.
Somebody else on the other
side, with nothing better to
do than sit and stare at
their monitor.

Perhaps we're all just
looking to see that everyone
else's hidden life is exactly
as dull and wonderful as our
own.

Michael Sheridan
<kepler@cyberus.ca>

Isn't that funny - with my
shoulder-length, strawberry
blonde hair and co-ed
cuteness, I too found
Jennicam weirdly like looking
into a mirror. But my breasts
are even lovelier.

Bartel