Mads Blog

While I was in Calgary, we were driving around late one night listening to a radio station with really good music playing. One song seemed familiar, and then I just knew it was an old Bowie song - it turns out I have it on vinyl. I never appreciated "Sons of Sound" before giving it a fresh listen.

Between the music, though, someone told a story of how when they were travelling in Europe, he was in Copenhagen one night after the last Eurorail train had left, so he went out and wandered around. He didn't have enough money for the hostel so he went from bar to bar. At about 3 AM, he approached some people who looked like they were having a good time to see where they were off to and where he could go, since he had to stay up all night anyway. They said "Join us!" so he did. They went somewhere fun and hung out until morning, but at one point he observed that they were dressed up quite nicely so he asked them where they were coming from, for being so well-dressed. They said "nowhere, really" and declined further explanation (I'm sure he didn't press the point).

The next morning he picked up a newspaper to take on the train with him, and while reading it, saw the people he had been hanging out with. They were the two princes of Denmark, Frederik and Joachim, and their entourage.

This on CBC Radio, folks, so it's got to be true.

Sorry for the lack of postage in a while. I've been hijacked to other interests and duties as described below, and sometimes I despair of ever progressing on certain things I have back-burnered.

While I write this, I'm about 3000 m above a patchwork quilt of varying shades of brown, with rivers and lakes and roads cutting through it. I'm on my way to Calgary for a business trip, and the next three days grant me some respite from my ordinary life so I can take a little much-needed time to myself. And so it was my intention to post a short update anyway. The thing is, the in-flight movie, on a little 6 x 8 LCD screen above one of every four rows in the plane, was King Arthur. So great! I have further observations to write about.

Er, sort of.

They edit these things for family content, so some of the more ribald jokes disappeared.

I paid attention to the way Mads spoke, and found it was perfectly normal. I paid more attention to Ray Winstone, as I just saw him in that brilliant, brilliant movie Sexy Beast last weekend (such good dialogue in that film; such a brave script, superb casting where everyone of significance except the Spanish boy was clearly over 45 and as un-stereotypical as you get). Ray really was important to King Arthur as well; he was the conduit through with the audience could really relate to such a high-falutin' historical principles film. I tried to pay attention to the action, in particular the scene that the fight director said Mads stole the scene, but I fear the scene was cut, the screen was too small for me to percieve what was happening, or I don't yet understand what kind of magic the fight director was talking about because it's something professionally related.

Sorry, guys and girls. And this prolongs the period in which I might wait to rent the movie, as I'm not an addict, you see. Too many movies fall by the wayside that I intend to rent; my boyfriend has commented to me twice in the past month or so that we haven't been to a movie at the cinema for a very long time. That's 'cause Sunday I've had Advanced On-Screen Acting (now over but for one Saturday session), Monday I have Pagans/Christians/Jews, Tuesday I have Immortal Longings, Wednesday I have Montreal Theatre, Thursday I have Memoir, Fridays we're exhausted and rent a movie or, lately, a TV series called Dead Like Me, which I'm awaiting the tapes of the second season from a friend with The Movie Network - they won't be repeated for a few months. And every day there's looking after the animals…and wasting time not writing for work but to people on the Internet.

So armed with all these excuses, I admit I saw Pusher about a month ago. It had a strange quality, kind of verité. And through this kind of filming, you observe what the hell is going on (this phrase is sometimes a question, but more often an accusation), and remain sympathetically detached. Kind of an "I told you so" story. Mads' role, Tonny, basically is a skinhead in a shell suit with too many bad tattoos and not quite enough brain cells. He's not unlikeable, in fact, the only character who is unlikeable is the lead character, Frank, who basically fucks everybody up, most especially himself (though if there was a competition on who Frank fucked up most, Tonny gave Frank a run for the money). But Frank isn't in Pusher II, coming out next year probably, and it's all about Tonny. I wonder what they're gonna do. I'm glad the character Milo is in it, because Milo had the most interesting character aside from, arguably, Frank's girlfriend.

Now, there was one thing that made me shake my head, if it's based on reality. Frank is running from the cops, literally, and he ends up in a lake, and he loses his bag of heroin, which scatteres in the wind and water. And yet the cops have nothing to charge him with? They saw him with the bag, the bag could be collected, residue could be collected from Frank himself and the water he's hauled out of, WTF, Denmark? Is Denmark the "oh no, it's a common criminal, let's shrivel up and die?" kind of place that Quebec is? If so, no wonder they say Quebec is very European. I do like the style of Danish policemen that were depicted in Pusher, though; one of them, if I recall correctly, was kinda sexy.