I'm taking a day off from skiing. This was a bit of a tough decision, as I only have one more day for skiing, tomorrow, before driving to Vancouver to visit the Fords and head home. There are two ski hills within driving distance of Kelowna, so I'm missing out on an opportunity to check both of them out. Still, I'm pretty burned out from all the skiing in the last two months and there doesn't seem to be much point in paying for a day of skiing that I wouldn't enjoy. So I'm enjoying a bit of a cocooning day, surfing the 'net (broadband access at the hotel!), getting caught up on emails, and listening to mp3's.

Sunday I drove from Nelson to Kelowna, and was blown away by the scenery. I guess I hadn't really figured out where the wine in B.C. comes from, so it was a bit of a shock to come over a snowy mountain pass and suddenly be at the top of a steep switchback looking down into a brown, snowless valley with bare vinyards in every direction and large lake of deepest blue. It was a beautiful day, and as every Canadian knows it was also the day of the great Olympic hockey showdown, which I was listening to on the radio as I drove. So I pulled into a restaurant at the bottom and watched the third period on their T.V. before continuing on up the Okanagan Valley to Kelowna. It felt wonderful to be enjoying the game, and the aftermath glow of patriotic pride, while in a beautiful part of Canada that I hadn't seen before. After a dramatic crossing of the floating bridge across Okanagan Lake I was in downtown Kelowna, by far the biggest city I've driven through since I left Calgary, and it was time to look for a hotel.

Yesterday I drove out to Big White, about an hour south-southeast of Kelowna. The road seemed to go up and up and up as I drove, and eventually the snowline showed up. Big White itself proved to be extremely cold, and clearly the rain which had hit Fernie had fallen as snow here. The rolling mountain tops of the resort, far less jagged and sharp than the Rockies, were covered in fir trees right up to the top. These were weighted down with an incredible amount of snow, so that some were bent completely over and their trunks and branches formed arches big enough to ski through. The snow base was excellent, but Big White had clearly had a large number of visitors over the weekend and there was little or no fresh powder left anywhere. Still, I had a good afternoon before returning to Kelowna.

Last night I caught a showing of Gosford Park at the local movie theatre. I quite enjoyed it. It's a complex enough movie, with enough raw star talent, that it's difficult to take apart enough to discuss in brief. There were some standout performances, and the general production values were very high. However, it felt like much of its promise was unrealized: so many characters could hardly be fleshed out in the constraints of a single movie, and there were many interesting subplots that all had to compete for limited time so that they felt either unfinished or at least rushed. As for the main plot line, its departure from a conventional murder mystery outline seemed rather a shame in this case, and in any case not an improvement. The brief mystery was quickly resolved and no particular detective work was needed by either the audience or the cast to determine the "villan". Individual clues were explained almost as quickly as they were presented. So: full marks for cast, costumes, scenery and characters, but they were let down by a mediocre story.
posted by Tom at 5:16 PM | link |