Micmacs, or orignally Micmas à tire-largiot, is a French film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the man who directed Amélie. Now, I’m sure some of you are asking, “How on earth will this ever escape the shadow cast by the ever so amazing Amélie?” Well, all I can say is that, even to all the die-hard Amélie lovers out there, Micmacs will not disappoint. (more…)

The end of the year has arrived and it’s time to regain my soul by immersing myself in art. One of the first things I did after finishing all my assignments was… go to the opera! This time, I decided to see Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman because I was of course, enchanted by the legend behind it that appeared in Pirate of the Caribbean. Unfortunately, there were no pirates with squid faces who could play the organ with their tentacle beards, but Wagner’s opera was pretty epic in itself. (more…)

When I woke up on the first day of March, the sun was aggravatingly bright and then it hit me: the Olympics were over. I recalled hazily the train wreck of giant beavers and mounties with Avril Lavigne and Simple Plan singing songs I liked when I was an angsty pre-teen and shuddered as I tried to bury that image in the graveyard of forgetfulness. True, the Olympics and the figure skating that I so eagerly awaited was gone, but I could still enjoy my pretty red Vancouver 2010 mittens as I rolled snow into a ball and threw it at my darling friend and fellow blogUT writer, Julia. Speaking of Olympic attire, here are a few fashion highlights and splats of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. (more…)

About a year and a half ago, I fell completely in love with Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir – a team of Canadian ice dancers. In light of their gold medal victory, I feel completely justified as many of my friends have expressed their awe after watching them. Personally, I also find it hard NOT to love them – I mean, they’ve skated together since they were 7 and 9, it’s obvious that there’s a lot of love and joy in their skating, they’re skilled, beautiful to watch and after meeting them at Skate Canada, I can say that they are wonderfully congenial people. In any case, let’s recap what they did at the Olympics, how they won gold and what their win means in the grander scheme of things. (more…)

Just like any other university student out there, we are all bound to procrastinate. Sometimes, you just sit there are don’t feel like doing anything at all, other times, you’re just checking Facebook and Twitter every 5 minutes in hopes of something interesting. If you’re stuck on how to procrastinate, here are a few blogs and sites that are an endless source of entertainment. (I thank my fellow friend and blogger, Victoria, for introducing me to most of these sites.)

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Waking up in the morning is always an ordeal for me. Seeing that I sleep at 3 or 4 in the morning, nothing is harder than dragging yourself out of bed at 8:30 to get to your 10AM class. To make the process of waking up easier, my iPod docking station is always there to wake me up with lovely tunes at the proper time. Admittedly, my favourite music to wake up to has to be the music from Carmen – even if it is overused figure skating music. (Also, yes, I have opera on my iPod, go ostracize me if you dare.)

Anyways, tonight, I had the wonderful fortune of getting one of the rare tickets to the Carmen dress rehearsal staged by the Canadian Opera Company. (My source of dress rehearsal opera tickets told me that they were completely sold out.) Tickets for the regular shows – on from January 27th to February 27th -  may also be sold out, but if you’re interested and perhaps lucky you can purchase tickets on the Canadian Opera Company website.

As for the show itself, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The orchestra and sets were very impressive (my favourite set being the one from Act II where the gypsies are in front of an inn) and the cast, although rather large was charismatic and fun to watch. Rinat Shaham – who played the title character – had the misfortune of stumbling upon this reviewer (who is, admittedly, an opera newbie) whose standard Carmen is the legendary Maria Callas, who has no equal; however, she held her own for most of the performance. The unfortunate corporal, Don José performed by Bryan Hymel was well cast and delivered a steady and touching performance. Songs by the two gypsy girls, played by Teiya Kasahara and Lauren Segal were also highly entertaining and formed some of the best parts of the opera.

My special mentions however, will go to Jessica Muirhead, who played the innocent Micaela with so much commitment and passion that she sent shivers up my spine when she was pleading with Don José to return to his mother. Another special mention will be sent to the youth or children’s chorus who displayed a kind of professionalism that was beyond their age.

All in all, it was a lovely evening of beautiful music, interesting choreography and a wonderful opera. I highly doubt that Carmen needs any more advertising as it is, but if you do get a chance, I encourage you to see it.

Picture by the Canadian Opera Company.

I just thought that something like this would be amusing to write considering that I’ve been going through several weeks of non-stop total exhaustion all thanks to my courseload of 6 courses. Without further ado, here are 10 things that all or at least most of you should relate to if you are, in fact, a student at university. (more…)