I am a sucker for man-against-nature movies. I pretty much see them all, and hope for just two things: a great story, and as much realism as possible. I’m not sure if The Grey has enough of either.

Liam Neeson stars as a “wolf sniper” for an oil refinery. He hides in the woods in his massive, puffy white Canada Goose jacket and picks off stalking wolves with his rifle as they ferociously charge groups of men working on the oil pipeline.

We’re three minutes in and this is the first completely unrealistic element of the film. No lone wolf in its right mind would ever attack five huge men working with tools on a pipeline. Nonetheless, that’s Liam’s gig.

The action really takes off when the refinery crew board a plane in a snowstorm, bound for Anchorage. The plane horrifically crashes in the middle of a horrendous blizzard, and suddenly it’s the survivors versus the nastiest pack of wolves this side of Hades, which is possibly the metaphor the filmmakers were going for.

All of the crew and most of the passengers are killed in the outrageous crash, but Wolfsniper Liam Neeson survives and quickly takes charge of the rest of the rag-tag, shell-shocked survivors.

Almost immediately they are set upon by a bloodthirsty pack wolves from all angles, and yes, Liam Neeson fights a wolf with his fists when he discovers it munching ravenously on a human. Liam explains to the panicked survivors that the wolves don’t want to eat them; they simply want to kill them.

Neeson’s character then inexplicably convinces the survivors to leave the plane, trudging them through white-out conditions to reach the tree line where “they’ll be safe”.

Wha… why? Why leave the fuselage of the plane? The number one rule of survival in the elements is seek shelter. They had that with the plane and left it far behind, and with it seemingly any chance of rescue. That plan bites them in the ass… literally.

And here’s when the movie turns into a cross between Cujo, The Blair Witch Project, and Ten Little Indians. Characters are predictably picked off one by one from various gruesome deaths, though none perish or even suffer from frostbite, starvation, hypothermia, or exposure,  the most common causes of death in frozen wildness situations.

Wait — am I being too nit-picky? Should I have suspended my disbelief and simply enjoyed the fright fest of the men at their campfire, sleeping on the snow, surrounded by what sounds like a gutteral Orc army from Lord of the Rings?

The filmmakers know that being attacked by wild animals is at the top of most peoples’ greatest fears, and for that reason we can’t look away from the screen (besides the guy in front of me who scrolled Twitter on his iPhone during any scenes with dialogue).

For anyone who has spent any time in the wilderness in the winter in BC, the mountainous backdrops are at once beautiful, familiar, and foreboding.

I really, really wanted to like The Grey, but wound up disillusioned and bemused by its premise. In its place, I would strongly recommend alternate, true-life man-against nature films, such as Sean Penn‘s Into The Wild or Werner Herzog‘s Rescue Dawn. And if you want to see what timber wolves are really like in the wild, check out Never Cry Wolf.

Have you seen The Grey? What did you think?

Back then, there were plenty of new bands that I simply had to take a chance on to find out if I liked them or not, which was an expensive gamble for a teenager. I developed a system of trust that was based on what indie label the record was on, and it worked like a charm for years.

I had my favourites, like Sub-Pop from Seattle, K Records from Olympia, Og Records from Montreal, Dischord from Washington DC, Norton from New York, Hangman from Chatham England, and Sympathy for the Records Industry from Los Angeles. But my very favourite record label, the one I would get the most excited about when I flipped over the record and saw that logo (above), was Lookout! Records from Berkeley, California.

I LOVED the punk rock energy of the records that came from that label, from bands like Screeching Weasel, the Queers, the Ne’er Do Wells, Green Day, Pansy Division, Operation Ivy, and the Mr. T Experience. It was pop-punk, mostly based in what the Ramones had blueprinted, but sonically advanced through much more audible singing; sometimes angry, sometimes funny, but always stressing melody, melody, melody, with more hooks than a Desolation Sound tackle box.

In 1995, my dreams came true when my very own band The Smugglers “got signed” to Lookout! Records. Suddenly, we had that logo on the back of our records!!! Lookout’s logo had changed by then, but I insisted that the classic, original logo appear on the back of our records.

We were thrust into an incredible community of bands who welcomed us with open arms (mostly because we always brought the party) as we joined an independent record label at its very height, run by a creative nucleus that included Larry Livermore, (one of the most influential figures in the American indie underground), Chris Appelgren (the artist who created many of the most iconic Lookout logos, covers, and artwork), and Molly Neuman (the woman who co-founded the riot grrrl movement a few years earlier in Olympia).

L-R: Larry Livermore (Lookout co-founder), Jess Hilliard, Evan, Chris Imlay, John Denery (the Hi-Fives), Grant Lawrence, Nick Thomas (The Smugglers)

We’d take part in star-studded Lookout! Records showcases at music events like the CMJ Music Marathon in New York and South By Southwest in Austin. The Lookout showcase would be the hottest at the festival, always selling out with a line around the block.

The stack of bands would include The Queers, the Mr. T Experience, cub, Pansy Division, the Hi-Fives, and the Smugglers, and a full-on raging rock ‘n’ roll party would erupt for five hours on stage to a riotous crowd. In later years, we’d be joined by the Groovie Ghoulies, the Criminals, the Donnas, and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists.

Lookout Records showcases in New York would always attract all sorts of luminaries, such as Joey and Johnny Ramone, Joan Jett, Bob Mould, Kim Fowley, Lemmy from Motorhead, William Shatner, and various Saturday Night Live stars, making us performers on stage pretty much just as starstruck as those in the audience.

Having Lookout’s trademark of quality on the back of our records was the turning point in our “career”, launching us way beyond Canada for successful tours across the USA, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Just like the “Mint Records Effect” in Canada, all international promoters needed to hear was “Lookout Records” and we’d get the show/the tour/the guarantee.

We eventually released three full length records (Selling The Sizzle, Rosie, Mutiny in Stereo), one live album (Growing Up Smuggler), one EP (Buddy Holly Convention) and one split EP (Summer Games, with the Hi-Fives) in our ten year span on Lookout.

Today, while working on my new book in France, I found out through Ted Leo’s blog, that after 24 years, Lookout Records has officially called it quits.The label hasn’t released a new record since the late 2000s and was existing only on back catalogue, but apparently that has also ceased as of the end of 2011.

So… thank you Lookout Records for making a teenager’s dream come true. It was one of the most exciting, visceral periods of my life so far, and whenever I see that classic logo I’ll always remember the good times.

Lookout Records 15th Anniversary Party, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco CA.

What’s your favourite Lookout Records memory/release/band/show?

* The Mr. T Experience 2004 album title.

Bonjour from France, the land of romance, cheese, wine, champagne, berets, bread, bottled water, Asterix and Obelix, and hopefully literally inspiration! I’m currently sequestered over here in the lovely southern part of the country, with one goal in mind: write as much of my next book as I possibly can.

My wife is here as well, attending an intensive French language course every week day from 9am to 5pm, so I thought what better place for a loudmouth like me to write my next book than a place where I can’t speak the language?

The fact that my French ain’t so great isn’t going over very well with certain French citizens. As soon as they find out I’m from Canada, they shout in my face “MON DIEU! Canada! Francais!!” Then I yell back “Non, non! Moi du OUEST CANADA! OUEST COTE MOI!” They look unimpressed with this answer.

I CAN understand many words, read most things, and get along just fine on my own, strolling around our village wearing a black beret my wife bought me to wear at all times… I just sound like a monosyllabic caveman when I actually speak:

“QUELLE TEMPS FERME?” That means “Excuse me madame, would you be so kind as to inform me what time your lovely boutique closes for the day, hmmm?” My wife, in the advanced French course at her school, is concerned I will sully her reputation in the village with my barbarian linguistics.

On weekends, my wife and I have had lots of stressful fun navigating the back roads of the French Riviera in a little three wheeled rental car, visiting ancient villages in the foothills of the French Alps like St. Paul de Vence, Grasse, Vallebonne, and Chateauneuf, as well as the sunny beach resorts of Cannes, Antibes, and Nice.

The stress comes when I have on more than one occasion burned rubber into a roundabout without yielding. This is a NON NON in France.

In the fragrant town of Grasse, where perfume was invented, I came very close to almost running down a motorcycle policeman in a roundabout. He skidded to stop and yelled at me. I waved, gave the thumbs up, and said “TOUTE LE MONDE!” He then made a half-hearted attempt to pull us over, looked at us again, and simply didn’t bother. Maybe it was my black beret?

We stayed at an amazing bed and breakfast in the hills over Cannes for a few nights. The owner, Wayne Brown, an Englishman, was kind enough to take us out in his speed boat on the crystal clear and azure Mediterranean Sea to see the palatial hotels and palm trees of Cannes framed by the snowcapped mountains of the Alps beyond. Stunning.

On my next wander, I hope to track down the villa where the Rolling Stones made one of their greatest albums: Exile On Mainstreet. It’s around here somewhere.

It’s been a wonderful retreat so far, the French are fantastic and welcoming people despite the rumours, and its all bringing back a rush of memories of many Smugglers European tours… now back to my primary goal.

And hey, let me know if you have any travel tips for the south of France!

Since my family is from BC and my wife’s family is from Ontario, we alternate where we spent Christmas… one year in BC, one in Ontario, repeat. This year, we were spending Christmas with my wife’s family at their tidy upscale retreat in Wellington, nestled on the shores of Lake Ontario in Prince Edward County.

This Christmas, my wife’s family decided they would revisit their yuletides of yore, getting a REAL Christmas tree to replace their tacky plastic one. And what a magnificent tree it was… a 9 foot tall, deep bushy green, perfectly manicured, heavenly scented, Nova Scotia spruce, just waiting for us to set up and decorate, which we did, in short order, upon arriving on Christmas Eve. We carried it straight through the front door with many a curious and bundled up County neighbour looking on and waving.

We heaved the enormous tree up and into its shiny red Canadian Tire tree stand in the corner of the living room, setting the tree as straight as possible. Once we had it just about perfect, my lovely mother-in-law insisted we re-set it, as she could see “ugly writing” displayed on the Christmas tree stand. She wanted that facing the wall. No problem. Done.

Then we got to work adorning the mighty sapling with nostalgic, weird, and extremely fragile ornaments from my wife’s childhood, along with dozens of twinkling lights and streams of tinsel and popcorn. When the tree was fully loaded with shiny ornaments of holiday joy, my wonderful father-in-law reached up and very carefully, very ceremoniously, placed the last piece atop the tree… a Christmas angel, arms outstretched to us all. My wife’s family broke into spontaneous and hearty applause. Unfamiliar with this tradition, I hesitantly joined in.

Like a good son-in-law, I then offered to crawl under the tree and fill the water reservoir to the very brim, so the tree would have more than enough water to keep it green and vibrant through to New Year’s. We then filled the base of the tree with all of our wrapped gifts, brought in from across the country. We took pictures, hi-fived, hugged, and sat on the chairs and couches around the tree, admiring our work and its twinkling beauty. It could be seen clearly in the living room window for the entire neighbourhood to enjoy.

In fact, the neighbour across the street so taken with the tree’s majesty, that he was compelled to rush across the street and give us a wrapped gift to place under the tree, just so he could see it up close.

Later that night, just before the clock struck midnight, we had all gathered in the adjoining TV room to watch the classic Marlon Brando / Frank Sinatra musical Guys and Dolls. The “gangsters” in the movie were all dancing and singing in the New York City sewer, belting out “Luck Be A Lady Tonight”, cueing my wife’s entire family to spontaneously and heartily all join in and sing along loudly, swaying back and forth on the couch, while I sat in an awkward silence, staring at them.

Suddenly, from the living room, there arose a hell of a clatter. Actually more of a metallic groan which quickly grew to a screech, much like the trash compactor in Star Wars. This was followed by a very loud WHOOSH, then a shattering crash. As we all spun our heads instinctively towards the living room, the only object our line of vision allowed us to see was… the treetop angel.

She was flying! Across the living room she soared, arms outstretched, her Mona Lisa smile across her little white face, her heavenly red gown flapping like a superhero’s cape. We all gasped, realizing we were quite possibly witnessing a true Christmas miracle! Then she crashed face-first into the heating grate. As she clattered to the floor, it snapped us from our wonderment. We hopped to our feet and piled into the living room.

The mighty Nova Scotia timber had collapsed. It had unceremoniously crashed to the living room floor, taking every precious ornament of my wife’s family heritage with it. Weird toilet paper tube reindeers were flattened, wooden clothespin Santas were snapped, paper snowflakes torn. Wet spruce needles were everywhere. The several litres of water I had poured in the reservoir under the tree had toppled over as well, gushing out onto the floor, soaking the presents and threatening to electrocute anyone standing in the puddle where the Christmas tree lights now blinked pathetically.

My mother-in-law threw her hands over her mouth agape, horrified. As the ancient grandfather clock struck midnight, signaling the arrival of Christmas 2011, my mother-in-law let out an anguished scream. “CHRISTMAS IS RUINED!!!” We slowly righted the tree, as various other shiny red antique bulbs dropped from the branches akimbo, shattering loudly all around us, my mother-in-law screaming “NO!” with each additional dash of destruction.

It turned out that the “ugly writing” displayed on the Christmas tree stand was in fact the “instructions”, which we had righteously ignored. The stand was now mangled and destroyed, much like many of the precious ornaments and soaking gifts.

We quickly decided that there would be no fixing it that night, so just hours after we loaded it in, we loaded it out. The curious County neighbours looked on, wondering what the hell kind of people load in a Christmas tree at 6pm on Christmas Eve, then one minute after midnight load it right back out again, seemingly in disgust.

We awoke on Christmas morning without a Christmas tree, to an array of soggy gifts, while we waited for the rest of the family to show up. My mother-in-law was distraught at the tree disaster, wondering, praying, for a Christmas tree miracle. My father-in-law was indignant and outraged that the tree had come down and wanted nothing further to do with it.

Like a good son-in-law, I stepped up, pulled on my runners and Christmas sweater and headed out to the barn, emerging with another old Christmas tree stand and a hand saw. And then… I cut the mighty Nova Scotia spruce in half… and mounted the now much smaller timber firmly into the older Christmas tree holder.

We set up 50% of the once towering tree in the living room again, decorating it with what survived the crash, my mother-in-law delighted. My father-in-law once again adorned the top of the tree with the arms-outstretched airborne angel, and we placed the drying gifts back underneath. The rest of the family arrived shortly after, not knowing the half of it. Christmas was saved, proving that, quite frankly, the TRUE Christmas Angel of 2011 actually flew in from Vancouver… and just may have the initials “G.L.”.

Oh, and the bottom half of the mighty Nova Scotia Spruce? I threw it in the creek.

When I was a kid, I had several ugly surgeries on my gimpy knees, meaning long recoveries in hospitals and at home. During one of these lonely, painful stretches, my Mom gave me a colourful graphic novel called The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin and the Black Island.

I was hesitant at first, wondering if it was even in English, but once I opened it up, I became hooked… for life. The action started within the first few frames, and never let up until the final frame. Here was an unassuming, polite, seemingly asexual, scrawny, geeky little guy with weird hair, kind of like… ME. He wasn’t a superhero… in fact, despite always game to fight way above his weight, he was constantly getting knocked out, beaten, shot at, poisoned, tied up, and captured, often having to be saved by Snowy, his precocious little white dog.

Tintin was a knicker-wearing crime reporter that worked out of his very modest apartment, yet travelled the world, fearlessly going head-to-head with the world’s toughest criminals in all ranges of geographic locales and conditions. And his best friend (after Snowy) was an alcoholic Scottish sea captain with a vicious temper and a mouth that would make Richard Pryor blush…. (which makes me wonder if I’ve become some sort of obsessed cross between Tintin and Captain Haddock).

My fear was that Steven Spielberg would turn the untouchable Tintin into a movie by using the same motion-capture animation used in the hugely creepy Polar Express. And would Spielberg be able to capture the subtle nuances of humour, satire, and intelligence throughout the books? Nonetheless, I found myself getting pretty excited once the previews were released, and so my 10 year old nephew Tanner (also a Tintin fan) and I were there for the North American 3-D premiere.

I can happily report that the Spielberg’s Tintin is AMAZING. It looks totally fantastic, from the very retro-cool opening credit sequence (Spielberg even uses the right font), to the stunningly beautiful segues between scenes (almost every sequence is gorgeous), to the excellent attention to detail in Tintin’s could-have-been-anywhere European city. There are plenty of early homages for die-hard fans, including iconic objects and characters from many of the books. Tintin himself looks a little less dorky and perky than he appears in the books… almost cool even… while Captain Haddock looks realistically wasted all the time.

And even though the movie is action-packed, Indiana Jones-style, I actually found myself thinking that the story lines in the books drive forward even faster than it does in this film. But once we get aboard the realistically rust stained freighter, it’s pretty much nonstop action to the end.

Another criticism is Spielberg’s unfortunate pandering to a cliched battle of hero versus villain during the climax of the film, which is drawn out and filled with over the top destruction. This was the furthest Spielberg strayed from the books, and since the climax is supposed to be the most exciting moment of any story, this was vaguely disappointing. The action sequence immediately before the finale, involving Tintin racing/stealing a motorcycle and side car through the cobblestone streets of a cliffside Moroccan village, is spectacular.

And hey, there’s even a few profound quotes wedged in between the action: trying to inspire Tintin, Captain Haddock has a rare moment of clarity through his alcoholic fog, calmly stating “a realist is just another name for a quitter”.

Will non-fans who have never read the books (aka normal dudes and girls) appreciate the movie? Possibly not. I’ve never read a Harry Potter book and therefore I have never had a shred of interest seeing any of the films, but I’m certainly glad my mom handed me that Tintin book so many decades ago… hey, I’ve even dressed as Tintin for Halloween many times over. Great snakes!

One other tip for Vancouver theatre-goers: We saw the movie in cinema 10 of Tinseltown in Chinatown, and there is a large scrape on the right edge of the screen that is easily noticed in any bright daytime scene, taking away from the amazing 3-D imagery.