Wednesday I went to the Agincourt Centre near Sheppard and Kennedy and took a class in Chinese brush painting. (I discovered it through Meetup.) Future classes will cost $15 each, but the first one was a free sample. I'm interested enough to go again, but not yet to buy materials so I can practise at home.
Unfortunately, the teacher spoke Chinese--the language of most of the pupils--and Anglophones like me needed an interpreter. I started drawing petals and didn't stop, so I produced several zinnias. There was also some Chinese calligraphy, which particularly interests me. I remember learning years ago that the brush strokes in Chinese characters are drawn rightward and downward, but if you have a diagonal line going between upper right and lower left downward gets preference unless it's just a slight tilt off horizontal. And the character "yong" (eternity) uses all the basic strokes.
Last night I saw Robert Altman's film of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye (for the second time) with the Classic Movie Meetup at the Revue. It was introduced by Geoff Pevere as part of a series of private eye movies. It's an oddly counter-intuitive adaptation: Moira says it's totally different from the book. I noticed David Carradine in a cellmate cameo, which Pevere confirmed afterward; he also confirmed that the actor playing the gangster was the same Mark Rydell who directed movies like On Golden Pond.
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