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Opinion

PIÑATA DIPLOMACY: Reforming ourselves

by Ricky Kreitner on

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What the hell was that?

My first General Assembly is, of course, today’s topic. But don’t go! I understand your weariness – the front page article, the editorial, and all the guest commentary pieces from student politicians with an overestimation of their own importance, as if we the constituents waited impatiently all weekend for their straight-talk account of things. I get it, but hear me out.

There must be a better way – not as the person next to you at the GA meant it, as if switching the venue or using clickers to vote or abandoning Henry Robert and his pesky rules would be enough. There must be a better way to debate, interact, and coexist on this campus. Forget the Students’ Society – any reform must be of ourselves.

The illusion – absolute and unchallenged – that we’ve already entered the real world is absurd. We haven’t. We all came here for an education, yet the “politicized” among us swagger as if they already have it. The Israel/Palestine debate, Choose Life, all of it. Everyone wants to be regarded as expert, fully knowledgeable, and fully developed intellectually. Thus the self-promotional declarations of conservatism or radicalism, because above all else, we must avoid being called apathetic.

We best manifest this illusion whenever offended – for it never stops there. Actions! The world must be rid of this menace! Made safe. I will save the world – with this GA resolution!

When offended by something, we may say so. This is our right, largely unchallenged, except by a few censorious McGill undergraduates with critics of abortion in their crosshairs. In fact, observing the astonishing frequency with which this right is exercised these days, journalist Michael Kinsley has called ours a “culture of umbrage.”

However, it is an entirely separate thing to propose the official and immediate removal of that which offends. This is not a personal right. Moreover, to compel one’s community to eliminate what one finds offensive would be tyrannical, solipsistic, and itself quite offensive.

Why is it so difficult to understand this as a two-step process? There is an important normative difference between condemning something and demanding its elimination, and a greater degree of justification is necessary for the latter. My tolerance for those who don’t recognize this grows weaker by the day.

Another thing: please, no more debating as if you’ve never heard the arguments of the other side. Again, the anti-pro-lifers are guilty (though one finds evidence of this infraction on both sides of the Hillel/Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights debate as well). Many pro-lifers believe abortion is brutal murder. You’re free to disagree, as I adamantly do, but you can’t expect to persuade anyone by employing little euphemisms like “bodily sovereignty” outwardly inoffensive but fraught with obvious and charged meaning. You have to realize that isn’t going to work, and specifically why not. By completely ignoring the counter-arguments, you reveal yourself as having operated all along in bad faith, purposely and contentedly divisive.

Those pushing the “discriminatory groups” resolution wanted to be seen as progressive insurgents, Alinsky’s latter-day saints, pushing the envelope, challenging the system, audaciously hoping, preserving 1968. History will vindicate! But it wasn’t like that at all. It was contemptible, totalitarian, and, not least, a complete waste of time. You fooled nobody, and appeared quite ugly in the process – perfectly transparent under those awful Shatner lights.

McGill isn’t the real world. But eventually we’ll apply in that world the lessons learned here. This realization should temper all campus activities – especially the controversial – with an appropriate dash of humility.

There’s nothing automatic about civilization, nothing permanent or self-sustaining. It requires actual work. You can’t just smash everything to bits and force the world to conform to your own arbitrary fancies. The realization that some students think this is the real world, and behave the way they do, sobers one quickly to the dangers facing us all.

McGill, News

Senate delays approval on Research and IT Resource policies

by Kayan Hui on

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The McGill University Senate met for the second time this calendar year on Wednesday to address two policies awaiting approval by its members.

Acting as the Senate’s chair, Principal Heather Munroe-Blum spoke about her recent trip to India in her opening remarks. The delegation from Quebec, composed of 130 members, worked to strengthen ties with Indian partners in business, education, and research.

“It was a great collaborative effort,” said Munroe-Blum, adding that her trip provided a “terrific opportunity for McGill to represent Quebec.”

In India, Munroe-Blum reached out to the country’s alumni and met with scholars currently engaged in scientific partnerships with McGill.

Munroe-Blum also discussed the move to a self-funded tuition model in the master of business administration program in the Desautels faculty of management. She observed that the old model had posed serious financial problems to the faculty and the school, and that the move to the new model would ensure quality and equity for graduate students. In her remarks, Munroe-Blum said that the implementation of the model for next fall “has opened a broad discourse on the funding of universities in Quebec.”

Finally, Munroe-Blum applauded the 13 current and former McGill students competing in this year’s Winter Olympics.

The Regulation on the Conduct of Research was originally slated for approval by the Senate, but due to administrative complications, no action could be taken during the meeting. The policy had been drafted to set regulations on the conduct of research and replace the Policy on Research Ethics and the Regulations on Research Policy, but it has garnered attention due the issue of military research.

Two administrators, William Foster and Rima Rozen, presented the final document. Foster spoke positively of the updated document but stressed the urgency of its approval.

“The policy is ready to be adopted … and we need this to be enforced as soon as possible,” Foster said.

While senators generally agreed with the substantial improvements to the policy, some did voice reservations. Arts Senator Sarah Woolf expressed concern for the lack of specificity of the ethical standards asked of researchers.

“It seems to me [that] the revised version does not provide a definition of what the ethical standard will be,” Woolf said.

The approval of a policy on the responsible use of McGill IT resources was also delayed due to administrative error. The proposed policy was crafted in response to many changes that have accompanied the evolution of information technology, which are not properly addressed by the current policy. Provost Anthony Masi motioned for another discussion prior approval of the policy at the next Senate meeting. Senators voiced their general praise of the document in-progress and offered friendly amendments. The policy will return to the Academic Planning Committee before it is presented to the Senate once again.

During the Academic Policy Committee report, Senate approved a new teaching program for the master of arts in teaching and learning in the Faculty of Education. The 60-credit program was created in response to a shortage of certified teachers in five targeted subject areas noted in a request made by the Ministry of Education, Leisure, and Sport. The proposed program will be offered to part-time students with an undergraduate degree or equivalent, and its implementation is subject to final approval by the Ministry.

Senator Don MacLean, dean of the Faculty of Music, also commented on the reforms approved last month by the APC for the undergraduate curriculum at the Schulich School of Music, which take effect in September 2010. The changes include defining a core curriculum for all music undergraduates and creating more opportunities for students to specialize.

“We have done something controversial, which has been to eliminate the honours program,” MacLean said. He explained that this would allow undergraduates to specialize both within their major program and in others.

News, SSMU

Five of seven motions pass at Winter General Assembly

by James Gilman & Tori Crawford on

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Five out of seven motions passed at the Students’ Society’s Winter General Assembly last Wednesday, with only a motion that sought to ban discriminatory groups – specifically pro-life groups – failing, and another being ruled out of order.

Unlike last semester’s GA, the assembly managed to address each motion of new business while maintaining quorum throughout.

SSMU President Ivan Neilson, while happy with the turnout, expressed mixed feelings about Wednesday’s GA.

“There was a lot of good, but I think with that there was some bad, so it’s hard to call it a complete success,” he said. “But we can definitely take some satisfaction, or at least some pride, in the fact that we ran through the entire agenda and didn’t lose quorum. I think that was probably the best part of it.”

The Resolution Re: Free Quality Accessible Education was not debated, as it was ruled out of order near the start of the meeting, due to redundancy. That resolution, which called for SSMU to commit to fighting for “free, quality, accessible education” and to supporting student parents and working students, was ruled to be too close to an old motion that had been dealt with by SSMU Council.

The resolution re: Discriminatory Groups failed to pass after lengthy debate over possible amendments to the motion, including one that would have removed the reference to pro-life groups.

The other five motions passed, however, and SSMU is now mandated to investigate their own and McGill’s financial ties to tar sands industrial developments in Alberta, to lobby the administration for the restoration of ATM machines that dispense five-dollar bills, and to oppose any future increases in mandatory ancillary fees as well as the “self-funded tuition program model.”

Additionally, SSMU is now mandated to reaffirm its commitment to human rights, social justice, and environmental protection, as well as either expand the mandate of the Financial Ethics Review Committee – a committee of SSMU Council – to act as an advisory board to the university “with respect to the ethical practices of corporations with respect to ethical practices of corporations with which McGill University conducts business,” or to create a new committee, known as the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee, to do so.

The resolution, which also calls for the lobbying of McGill to divest from companies that do not meet ethical standards determined by FERC or the CSR Committee, generated controversy leading up to the GA because two of the whereas clauses alluded to the occupied Palestinian territories.

Much of the opposition to the motion was organized around this fact, with some calling the motion a “demonization of Israel.”

“I don’t think the GA is the right forum [for dealing with Middle East politics],” said Hillel McGill President Mookie Kideckel, who is also a Tribune columnist. “That’s part of why we organized against the motion. It’s not that you shouldn’t talk about it, but the GA – there’s always too much riding on it, the tensions are too high, there’s too much at stake to have frank, genuine, honest, open dialogue.”

However, Khaled Kteily, the vice-president membership and development of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, the group which submitted the motion, expressed disappointment with the campaign against the resolution.

“We’re unhappy with the characterization of our motion as a ‘demonization of Israel,'” Kteily wrote in an email to the Tribune. “Israel does violate the human rights of Palestinians, and companies that you and I may be paying money to through SSMU or through McGill are helping. We are concerned that companies are profiting from the illegal occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories.”

The motion was passed, however, only after an amendment removed the two whereas clauses dealing with the occupied Palestinian territories.

“My reaction is that McGill students demonstrated that they are completely committed to human rights and just have no interest in seeing Israel unfairly singled out,” Kideckel said.

Neilson was happy with the mandate provided to him by the motion, and he pointed out that it fits in with a project he’s already been working on.

“I’ve been looking at all of our committees since the beginning of the year, so this is actually something that fits pretty well with [that],” he said. “And in a way it’s kind of nice to be getting some direction in that, and to have some kind of a mandate from the students is something that’s beneficial, and that I will certainly take into account.”

Neilson did express concern over the scope of the mandate proposed by the motion, however.

“I think there are some issues on the level of what exactly it asks FERC to do, simply because they are issues completely unrelated to SSMU,” he said. “What the motion entirely misses is that McGill already has a committee – the Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility – which is a board committee that already accomplishes this function, and would be much more effective at doing the kind of review that I think they’re after.”

However, Kteily expressed concern over this unit, which is a part of McGill’s Board of Governors, and meets on an ad hoc basis.

“The problem here is accessibility. Undergraduate students are not represented on this committee at all,” Kteily wrote. “We believe that this CSR committee will ensure that undergraduate students’ concerns are adequately represented at a university level.”

Letters to the Editor, Opinion

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: What a Winer

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Re: “Why Gaza Remembrance Week misses the point” by Adam Winer (09.02.10)

Mr. Winer seems to have entirely missed the point in believing that SPHR should be neutral in its display and presentation of speakers for the Gaza Remembrance event. When an entire population becomes the target of Israeli amunition and unjustified sanctions, then logically people have to stand up in defence of human rights and to lobby governments and intellectuals to stop the suffering of the Palestinian people. SPHR’s event is one drop in that ocean of lobbying to stop human rights violations in Gaza. I would also encourage Mr. Winer to read the news column that was elegantly presented by the McGill Daily on Gaza’s Crippling Health Care (08.02.10). We need hundreds of Gaza Remembrance events and many more doctors of the likes of Mads Gilbert to paint a true picture of the suffering of the Gazan people and influence the political decision in our local vicinity and at the federal level.

– Ayman OweidaPhD II Experimental Medicine

Opinion

COMMENTARY: Eye-fucking hate Avatar

by Matt Essert on

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I am worried about the future. There are many things that make me think that the future will not be as exciting as Back to the Future 2 and The Jetsons, such as global warming, international strife, the possible collapse of capitalism, and other similarly serious problems. But more importantly, I am worried about the future of movies.

I have always loved movies. My family had a large collection of VHS tapes – now DVDs – and is slowly building a collection of Blu-ray discs. (We also actually have one or two HD DVDs and an HD DVD player because my Dad bet on the wrong horse.) One might think that my love of movies would lead me to be excited about Avatar‘s evolutionary 3D technology. Well, yes, I think 3D is neat, but it’s hardly enough to fill the emptiness left by a horrible movie like Avatar.

I thought Avatar was terrible, and I’m shocked that others don’t feel the same way. I think that everyone was caught up in the fancy technology and the use of 3D and forgot about the actual movie.

Avatar‘s story was a derivative of an old, classic tale. The characters were poorly developed and not engaging. The conflict was uninteresting and I felt nothing for the characters’ plight. The political undertones were so obvious that I felt like Michael Moore was yelling at me.

However, almost everyone seems to disagree with my take on the movie. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the Avatar “extraordinary” and gave it four stars out of four saying, “Watching Avatar, I felt sort of the same as when I saw Star Wars in 1977.” A.O. Scott of the New York Times also said watching Avatar was like the first time he saw Star Wars. While I agree that Avatar was, to a certain extent, mesmerizing, and that James Cameron created something visually impressive – keep in mind it did cost him $237 million.

In my opinion, Avatar is no Star Wars. Yet last month Avatar won the Golden Globe for best motion picture (drama), while in ’77 Star Wars did not win any best film awards. It won seven Academy Awards, but for things like sound, costume design, and visual effects – not for best picture. (The Oscar that year for best picture went to Annie Hall). And yet I would argue that Star Wars was light-years better than Avatar.

Star Wars was a good movie, but only won awards for its technical merit. If Avatar wins the Oscar for best picture the Academy is just saying that all that really matters in a movie is using cool effects, bright colors, and 3D. If Avatar hadn’t been so visually orgasmic, I don’t think it would have received nearly as much critical praise as it has. But, as more audiences and critics are drawn to this visual spectacle, I fear that we will lose the art of movie-making and we will eventually be left watching movies like Avatar and the 2008 Wachowski Brothers eye-fuck that is Speed Racer. However, I’m worried that it’s only a matter of time until insane flashes of colour and visual stimuli eclipse the importance of story-telling and we’re eventually just paying $12 to watch a giant screen with flashing lights and 3D explosions, which isn’t even close to the world I was promised in Back to the Future 2 and The Jetsons.

It’s possible that I’m just like those people from the 1930s who thought sound would ruin the movies. If that’s the case then you can say: “I told you so.” Until then, I’m going to stay worried.

Matt Essert is a U2 philosophy and political science student.

Letters to the Editor, Opinion

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Be careful, name calling can hurt

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I think the Financial Ethics Review Committee cares a lot about human rights, social justice, and environmental protection. I also think that the Israeli army and the Israeli government sometimes do things that are morally questionable, if not repugnant. However, I think that Wednesday’s motion is not primarily a function of anybody’s commitment to human rights, social justice, and environmental protection, but of condemning the State of Israel. I think the question of the morality of Israel’s actions is an important one which has its place in school newspapers, political discussion groups, and maybe even in politically-affiliated social action groups. It just upsets me when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is cloaked in the guise of a fervent commitment to human rights, social justice, and environmental protection. It is inarguably very clever to sneak the Middle East conflict into a motion about wonderful causes. It frames all students who are uncomfortable with the occupied territories clause as callous human beings with no morals. However, it is also an ignoble sham. I think it’s pretty darn bad to exploit such noble pursuits as human rights, social justice, and environmental protection and use them as political pork to smuggle a contentious issue into Shatner. Hell, I might even risk name calling to vote against that.

– Yael GreenbergU1 Arts

News

Land Institute founder Wes Jackson discusses climate change

by Alison Bailey on

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Wes Jackson, a leading environmentalist and the founder of the Land Institute, a Kansas-based environmental research organization, kicked off his lecture last Wednesday with a harrowing comparison.

“I am going to give a talk tonight that may be rough,” said Jackson. “I have not given this talk before, and I have prepared it partly because I had to.”

In the lecture’s first five minutes, Jackson soberly compared climate change to Nazi-occupied Germany, using a quotation from a Nicole Krauss novel. He challenged the audience with the notion of being a bystander and called for citizens to question what their responsibilities are on the issue.

“There were rumours of unfathomable things, and because we couldn’t fathom them we failed to believe them, until we had no choice and it was too late,” Jackson said, quoting Krauss.

Jackson stressed the importance of using the appropriate terminology in describing environmental problems.

“To assign the language of economics to the ecosystem is to have this perverse notion that we can control it,” he said.

Jackson also emphasized that scientific research conducted in the field must be done objectively. Arguments should not shape the research – rather the research should shape the arguments.

“My question to the ecosystem service researchers is this: are you planting the flag of science into the unknown, into the realm of mystery?” he asked.

One peculiar aspect of Jackson’s lecture was his heavy use of literary references to build his argument and convince his audience of their moral responsibility. This led some listeners to criticize the lecture for being short on scientific data.

Faiz Abhuasi, a McGill alumnus with a degree in International Development Studies, said the argument was convincing but questioned the efficacy of Jackson’s approach.

“If you want to convince people to change their behaviour, the tools he uses are great,” Abhuasi said. “But if you want to convince people to change … the behaviour of people in power, you can’t use irrational, non-scientific arguments.”

However, for Eby Heller, a master’s student in geography at McGill, Jackson’s credibility as a scientist was not an issue.

“Having seen his other side, in which he is extraordinarily capable of having extremely scientific arguments, makes me less worried about him,” Heller said. “Because I know he can talk any plant-geneticist around the bush six times. He actually knows what he’s talking about.”

Science & Technology

New study suggests that for some, obesity may be genetic

by Matt Essert on

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A recent study published in Nature has revealed that a proportion of morbidly obese people are missing a certain piece of DNA. The study found that seven of every 1,000 obese people are missing a specific part of their DNA, which contains about 30 genes.

Professor Philippe Froguel and Dr. Robin Walters examined approximately 15,000 obese and non-obese people.

“We looked in nearly 12,000 non-obese people and only found [this piece of DNA] to be missing once, compared to 15 in 2,304 morbidly obese,” Walters said. “The chances of seeing that difference at random is vanishingly small – one chance in 1.6 billion – which means it is near certain that there is some causal relationship.”

Swiss researchers had found similar DNA patterns in obese and non-obese subjects, prompting Walters and his colleagues at Imperial College London to conduct the study.

“Each of us happened to notice from routine data that a small number of people were missing one of their two copies of this specific piece of DNA,” Walters said. “More careful investigation showed that all the adults missing this DNA were obese.”

Dr. Robert Sladek, an assistant professor of medicine at McGill and the Genome Quebec Innovation Centre, discussed his contributions to the study.

“We’ve got a long standing collaboration with Philippe Froguel at Imperial to look for diabetes genes,” he said. “So the work for the study was 95 per cent done at Imperial by Robin Walters … [Our] main role in this study was generating some of the first data that was used.”

“As the study was going I talked with Robin Walters,” Sladek said. “But my main role was that I was quite sceptical about the findings.”

Sladek said that this study would change the way diseases like obesity will be thought of in the scientific community.

“Up until now, we’ve been working with an idea that common diseases like obesity and diabetes would come from common genetics variances,” he said. “What this study is reporting is getting back to a genetics – rather than a genomics – approach.”

The study has demonstrated that this missing piece of DNA can have a drastic effect on a person’s health, making obesity almost inevitable.

“For some people, particularly people that carry this genetic variant, I would say being obese is almost unavoidable,” Sladek said. “And it’s questionable to me whether they could improve their appearance by either an exercise or diet regime.”

Having established that there is causality between this missing piece of DNA and obesity, the next step will be to study the way these genes interact and hopefully develop a treatment for obese people missing this piece of DNA.

“Now that we know that this deletion causes obesity, we can start looking at the genes affected by the deletion to find out which of them is related to the effect on obesity,” Walters said. “And if we can find out exactly why this deletion leads to obesity, we might be able to develop treatments to help the affected patients lose weight or avoid weight gain. At the very least, it will tell us more about why some people become obese and others do not.”

Although this has been an important step forward in this field of genetics research, Sladek pointed out that until further development has been made towards a treatment, people battling obesity should stick to diet and exercise.

“If you’re heavy right now, I’m going to tell you to diet and exercise,” Sladek said. “In the future, I’m going to tell you diet and exercise, and by the way, you have gene X broken and we know that a particular pill works better for people who are missing this particular gene.”

Sladek added that although this statistic of seven in 1,000 may seem slim, the implications can be felt throughout Canada.

“Let’s say seven in 1,000 morbidly obese people probably carry this variant based on our study; that’s going to translate into probably a few thousand people across Canada,” he said. “So it’s relatively uncommon, but for those few thousand individual people, it is likely having a very profound effect on weight.”

News

In India, Munroe-Blum secures a new research partnership

by Nick Frid on

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McGill is hoping that a new agreement with TERI University in India will put the university at the forefront of climate research. The research memorandum focusses on three different aspects of environmental research: urban transportation, biofuels, and renewable energy.

Principal Heather Munroe-Blum and Denis Thérien, McGill’s vice-principal (research and international relations), secured a memorandum of agreement with New Delhi-based TERI University, as well as similar agreements with three other Indian universities, while accompanying Quebec Premier Jean Charest on a trade mission to the country.

The agreement was also signed in order to increase the ease of communication between universities. TERI University is already renowned for its climate research, and this agreement will help to enable better student and faculty exchanges.

“One of the goals we have been constructing is to improve student mobility, and not only students, but faculty as well, and both ways,” said Thérien. “We would like Indian students to come to McGill, and we want McGill students to go to TERI … It’s a two- way relationship.”

Dr. P.P. Bhojvaid, vice-chancellor of TERI University, who co-ordinated the agreement from TERI’s side, has lived in Montreal and knows the McGill community well. The universities had been in academic contact prior to the agreement and the research memorandum is intended to serve as a formal recognition of this partnership.

“There are already relationships between colleagues at McGill and colleagues from TERI University. You have to be aware there are two things, the institute and the academy, and we are already working with both on all three legs. The agreement that we signed was to formalize something already in place,” said Thérien.

The prospect of going to study in India is certainly exciting for some students.

“I would love the experience of studying in India because it would bring a different perspective,” said Max Luke, U1 biodiversity and conservation. “As an environment student, too, it would be great to go there because I think McGill has made a really good choice with this school and this research collaboration.”

Professor Donald Smith of the department of plant science is one of the researchers involved with the biofuel portion of the project. He explained the growing importance of this type of research given current global economic conditions.

“Global energy demand is rising steeply in both developed and developing nations and, at the same time, we are about at the point of maximum rate of extraction of crude oil, thus demand is beginning to outstrip supply,” he said.

One of the keys to Smith’s work is to lower the input and maximize output of the energy involving biofuels – achieving this is critical to future success.

“Brazil currently produces 50 per cent of its fluid fuels on only one per cent of its agricultural land,” Smith said. “Through developing the resource, [Brazil] has positioned itself extremely well for a world where fossil fuels are relied on less and less.”

Right now, both schools are looking on their respective sides for funding to help the program. In terms of the research, Thérien said, “the first concrete next step is the workshop on the theme of biofuels between colleagues of McGill and colleagues of TERI which should take place in the next few weeks.”

The two schools are also quickly working to benefit the students and exchange professors.

“We are looking at how possible it is in a short time frame to exchange courses and programs; to have some professors go there and teach our models,” Thérien said. “For example, something we discussed last week was sending our professors over there to teach a very intensive three week course.”

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

Fear and loathing just outside of Las Vegas

by Kyle Carpenter on

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It’s been said that there’s only two different types of stories: either the protagonist leaves his or her old life, or someone new enters it. Oversimplified? Yes, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any truth to it. In the case of Saint John of Las Vegas, it’s both. Steve Buscemi stars as John Alegheri, a pathetic yet quirky recovering gambling addict-turned-insurance fraud investigator alongside his new partner, an enigmatic hard-ass named Virgil (Romany Malco, from Weeds and The 40 Year Old Virgin). Together they investigate the case of a stripper (an almost unrecognizable Emmanuelle Chriqui of Entourage) who ends up in a wheelchair after getting into a car accident in the desert, which Virgil believes is a sham.

In the opening scene, we see John frantically rambling to a girl working at a convenience store about buying lottery tickets with a large envelope full of money, with half of his face covered in red bruises. The movie then jumps back in time to John’s self-narrated everyday life at the office. The film cuts between the scene at the convenience store and the linear plotline throughout the movie, making the viewer ask a number of questions: where did he get the money? And more importantly, what happened to his face? It’s similar to the vague opening scene of The Hangover, where a beat-up Bradley Cooper explains that his friend’s wedding isn’t going to happen.

The movie takes the form of a road novel, with John and Virgil travelling around the Nevada desert trying to find ways to prove the car accident was fake. In true road novel fashion, there is a lot of emphasis on strange, far-out characters that they meet along the way. Examples include a community of naked men with guns and a stuntman who’s malfunctioning suit makes him periodically catch on fire. The latter’s conversation with John and his attempts to smoke a cigarette make for one of the best and most creative scenes in the film.

Sarah Silverman, whose performance is different from her venomous-tongued stand-up routines, plays the love interest: a receptionist obsessed with smiley faces, though that’s only the beginning of her mental problems. She’s good at playing the sexy-yet-creepy role – think a more subtle version of Isla Fisher in Wedding Crashers. Although Buscemi’s performance is commendable as always, Malco overshadows his performance; his combination of straight-man and sociopath accounts for most of the film’s humour.

Saint John of Las Vegas is darkly funny, but more often than not, it’s not laugh-out-loud. The cast is strong and simple, with Buscemi, Malco, and Silverman accounting for the majority of screen time. Unfortunately, Chirqui is underused, as her role on Entourage has shown that she’s more than just a pretty face. Throughout the film, the viewer is kept in the dark almost as much as John, which gives the illusion that we’re being lead along by Virgil as well. With the right attitude and a bit of patience on the part of the audience, this technique pays off, as the viewer is forced to react to the unexpected twists as if they’re happening to them as well.

Saint John of Las Vegas plays at AMC Forum 22.

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