Glebe Report

“Transitions are hard mummy,” said my youngest. “Maybe you need to get used to noise.” As we collectively approach a moment of transition, with its attendant joys and anxieties, I highlight two children’s picture books that focus on the possibilities of movement and change.

Ethereal, haunting, earthy, gut-punching – if I had a poet’s mastery of language, I’d be reaching for words like these to describe a new collection by Old Ottawa South’s Susan J. Atkinson. Atkinson is a poet and Grade 1 teacher at Charles H. Hulse Public School. The Marta Poems is her debut poetry collection.

This month, the Glebe Report brings you a plethora of films to while away what remains of the pandemic. Lois Siegel reviews the 1979 classic Meatballs; Kate Roberts reviews a quirky Korean film, Space Sweepers; Barbara Popel introduces us to Chloé Zhao’s second film The Rider, just before her Oscar winner Nomadland; Angus Luff reviews the 2014 film Whiplash that is still relevant today; Xavier Saikaley reviews the 1994 Tim Burton film Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp; and Iva Apostolova introduces us to the UK film The Woman in the Window reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock.

A season of beginnings, daylight and warmth, leaves in bud, birdsong, crocuses! Thaws, rain and floods, too. How does release from winter’s grasp feel after a year with the pandemic? Here are your poems of relief – exuberance –wistfulness – and joy. Spring has come!

Here are two takes on the Oscar-winning film Sound of Metal, one from Glebite Barbara Popel and the other by Glebe Collegiate student Angus Luff. Both find the film “surprising.”

Niamh O’Kelly reviews the popular film Nomadland, this year’s winner for best picture and director at the Oscars.

Blow-Up, a 1966 thriller directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, was based on a short story by Julio Cortázar called “Las babas del Diablo.”
 Read a review by filmmaker Lois Siegel.

Whoever has stepped into the multi-purpose room in the Glebe Community Centre has certainly noticed the framed sign hanging above it: colourful Lego blocks against the grey baseplate spell the words that identify the space ahead. But what about the small black tag glued on the top right corner of the sign?

The documentary film A Drummer’s Dream is an 
absolute must for drum
mers and interesting for anyone else who loves music. The location is Westport, Ontario – cottage country, near a lake, at a summer drum camp with 40 students.

The film My Octopus Teacher is a documentary released last September on Netflix, directed by James Reed and Pippa Ehrlich. It follows Craig Foster, a filmmaker and founder of the Sea Change Project, as he dives in the Cape Point reef. He comes in contact with an octopus, and they form a remarkable trust and bond.

Glebe resident Louis J. Cabri can look back on the many awards for his mineralogy research and fieldwork. But just as gratifying is his recent work on a just-published, richly illustrated book about his wife Mimi’s remarkable South African family, the De Meillons.

This month our long-time film reviewer Lois Siegel brings us The Dig, a recent UK release set in England just before the Second World War, and new reviewer Kate Roberts gives us her take on the recent American movie Palm Springs, a variation of the Groundhog Day theme, a perfect pandemic film.

How much suspense does a story need? Just enough to keep you reading. Ken Shipley knows how to do that. LeapTurkey … and Other Stories, by Ken Shipley, reviewed by Stewart Geen.

The advice I got when I first moved to Ottawa was: Don’t try to avoid winter – embrace it. Here are some winter reads to help you and your child fall in love with winter all over again – even in the month of February!

This month our intrepid film reviewers bring you The Queen’s Gambit, the drama miniseries that everyone is talking about, and Arch of Triumph, a 1948 American film adaptation of the novel of the same name by German writer Erich Maria Remarque.

This month, Paul Green reviews the historical French film De Gaulle, set in France in the spring of 1940, and Lois Siegel writes about A Trip to Greece, the latest “fun-filled romp” from the U.K. featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon eating their way through Greece.

Like many other charities, St. Matthew’s Anglican Church has had to change its fundraising plans because of COVID-19. The church holds a major auction, with all the trimmings, every three years, and this wasn’t meant to be one of them. But instead of “Jazz & Tapas” originally scheduled for the fall but cancelled, St. Matt’s is looking forward to its first-ever online auction.

This month, Paul Green reviews the 2019 French film, La Fille au Bracelet or The Girl with a Bracelet, a subtly told psychological tale, and Lois Siegel tells the inside story of her 1995 documentary Stunt People, about four generations of stunt actors.

This month, Paul Green reviews the 2019 French film, La Fille au Bracelet or The Girl with a Bracelet, a subtly told psychological tale, and Lois Siegel tells the inside story of her 1995 documentary Stunt People, about four generations of stunt actors.

Local artists Christopher Griffin and Heidi Conrod have found ways to make their art work for the Ottawa Food Bank and the Mayfair Theatre.

This month, Paul Green reviews the 2019 French comedic farce How to Be a Good Wife (originally La Bonne épouse), and Lois Siegel talks about the 2020 film Made in Italy about a troubled father-and-son relationship.

In As I Walked About, a collection of Phil Jenkins’ city columns that ran from 2003 to 2017 in the Ottawa Citizen, Jenkins walks, as he says, “in two tenses,” present and past. He observes the eccentricities of the architecture and the people he meets. Review by Ralph Smith.

Studio Sixty Six (Unit 101, 858 Bank Street) is showing “Passages,” the photographic art of MaryAnn Camps, until August 16. “We are living in an in-between state, a passage, a time of transition and uncertainty. Without the crowds and fewer cars, can we reimagine our cities through fresh eyes?”

Lois Siegel reviews Drumline, a 2002 documentary about a marching band in Atlanta, including the reviewer’s own marching-band experience, and Paul Green shares his insights on La Femme de mon frère (English title: A Brother’s Love), 2019, a delightful brother-sister comedy fraught with dysfunctional family doings and overtones of frustrated feminist yearnings.

One of the saddest losses of the forced isolation of COVID-19 has been group music making. For musicians and music lovers alike, the inability to share their experience with peers and the community is a deprivation with detrimental mental health and other negative outcomes.

Have pen, will travel. For the Glebe Report’s May Poetry Quarter, we asked for poems that revealed the good, the bad and the ugly of your traveller selves. Where have you travelled or wish you had gone or still wish to go, if only in your mind? We sought poems that captured your adventures as you roamed the landscape of your special places. Here are the poetic tales you brought back.

Although, with the cancellation of the 2020 Glebe Art in Our Gardens and Studio Tour, artists cannot host guests in their gardens and studios this summer, they are still busy creating art and are inviting visitors to take a virtual tour of their work.

Southminster United Church and the Master Piano Recital Series are responding to social isolation with a six-part, live-streamed Sunday Piano Series on Sundays at 3 p.m. from May 10 through June 14.

This month, Paul Green reviews the “delightfully atmospheric” 1947 French film Quai des orfèvres, and Lois Siegel reviews the recent American documentary Crip Camp, set in a summer camp for disabled kids in the Catskills in the 1970s.

This month in film, a review of the film Kalifornia by Lois Siegel, and the French film Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) reviewed by Paul Green.

Choral music and group singing are of interest to an increasing number of people. This month, Bob Brocklebank tells the story and Glebe origins of the Bytown Voices, and Janice Manchee gives a first-hand account of what it’s like to sing Bach in the Rideau Chorale.

This month, Robin Gallagher of the Sunnyside library provides a roundup of titles on sewing to guide and inspire your sewing projects, and Clyde Sanger reviews Aging: the Best Alternative, a book of poetry by Pat McLaughlin.