It's been two days since I watched The Duckling at the Innis Theatre and I can still feel its effect rumbling around my insides. I don't want to reveal much but I've been urging my friends to go and see this heart-churning autobiographical documentary by 20 year old Sayaka Ono.

Sayaka is still trying to deal with feelings of abandonment from when her parents shipped her off to a boarding-school kindergarten at age 5. For 15 years she's struggled with the resulting suicidal effects and the film follows her confrontations with her parents, her two brothers, her sister and numerous ex-classmates from that fateful year. The Duckling is a film boiling over with emotion and I guarantee you won't walk out of it feeling as good as when you went in but I urge you to see it! Emotion as raw as this is rare in any medium. The Duckling plays tonight at the Bloor Cinema at 11pm and it's FREE!
[image nicked from news.BBC.co.uk]

A two for one at Hot Docs . Both focus on particular music genres and both are very different. The first, Heavy Metal Jr., is a 24 minute short following the metal dreams of a group of Scottish headbangers as they work towards their first gig. The catch? The band members are all between 10 and 12 years old.

The material is light and was loved by the audience who roared with amusement at the antics of a 10 year old lead singer, his yelping, preening voice-coach father/manager, and the ordeal of finding a replacement bassist 2 weeks before the gig at a country fair. Despite the appreciative audience, I found HM-Jr a disappointment.

The Hot Docs documentary festival begins tonight. These two participants of Darkon, a live action role-playing game, were ready to bash it up on Charles street today in anticipation of their film named, aptly, Darkon which has its international premiere tonight at 10:15 at the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor W).

We have 10 glorious days of docs ahead, with subjects to fit any palette: From a focus on Werner Herzog, to films covering environmental issues, social problems, and global conflicts there's something for everyone. Single tickets are $10 but several screenings are FREE! Full schedules and venue details can be found at the Hot Docs website.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. With the price of fossil fuels rising daily there are rumblings that more nuclear plants will be constructed or refurbished within Ontario in the coming years.

I understand electrical power as a necessity to modern life but I lament commercials for Hummer H3s and box-stores already pushing air conditioning units for another hot summer. Instead of constantly increasing our energy consumption levels, maybe we should attempt the novel idea of making due with less?

A couple of days ago I was cycling through Mount Pleasant Cemetery. I noticed clusters of these pretty bluish-purple flowers everywhere across the lawns and over the graves. After saying hello to William Lyon Mackenzie King I thought the scene looked so pretty I wouldn't mind having those flowers blooming above my own plot (hopefully in the far, far future).

Not being a florist or a horticulturist I wondered what these tiny buds of colour were named. Can anyone out there identify them for me? There's a close-up if you continue reading...

A quick reminder that writer/producer Michael Sparaga and director Blake Van De Graaf are bringing their travelling roadshow copy of Sidekick to Toronto today. Not having a distributor, the duo has taken the unique approach of taking their film across Canada and booking it into single theatres in various cities.

The tireless promoting friends urge you to "Change the Way You Feel About Canadian Movies" (the film's tagline) as their film unashamadly puts Toronto on display. It's nice to have Toronto appear in a feature as its true self and not disguised as New York or Chicago but even better is this fun movie's keen awareness of the comic book geek culture. Screening is today at 7pm at the Royal Cinema 608 College St.