Just got back from the screening of Hostel (imdb | rotten tomatoes). I kinda liked it, but I think we were both a little disappointed. I think maybe we’d built up our own nerves so much that there was no way the reality could live up to the hype. Maybe I’m just de-sensitized now, but I never once felt sick or light-headed. C’mon, Eli!!

Now…all that said, the movie is ***WAAAAAAAY*** to graphic and gory for anyone who considers themselves even the slightest bit squeamish. Put it this way: if Saw or Creep bothered you, I’d stay away from this. If you could barely stomach Natural Born Killers or Cabin Fever, then for god’s sake, don’t even approach the theatre.

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Also: we got home just in time for the third period of the world junior gold medal game, and Canada is kicking Russian ass. Barring a massive Canuck collapse, it looks like Evgeni Malkin and the rest of the Russians will have to eat their words.

One of the things I got for xmas was a new pair of noise-cancelling headphones, and I’m really digging them. They’re great for work (and only work, I suspect; if I wore these outside I’d get hit by a cab within an hour) ’cause they block out so much of the annoying office noise. I had the same initial problem as my brother about pushing anything so far into my ear, though I got it pretty quickly. I suspect they’re less complicated than his Etymotics.

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Mmmmm…Chromewaves has a picture of my girlfriend in today’s post. Thanks Frank.

Well…it sure as shit beats Whoopi Goldberg.

Jon Stewart to host Oscar ceremony [via Yahoo]

My new hero: Luigi Cascioli.

Now that my magazine subscriptions have pretty much run dry, I’ve actually been able to get back into some real honest-to-goodness books in between chapters of economics. I’ve gotten back into Chris Turner’s Planet Simpson which has been languishing on my shelf for a year; once I’ve finished that I plan to read one of the following:

• No War: America’s Real Business In Iraq
• Freakonomics
• Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit?
• The Guns Of August

Sweet. I just won tickets from Now Magazine to an advanced screening of Hostel (imdb | rotten tomatoes) on Thursday. Check out the description of the movie:

Internationally renowned filmmaker Quentin Tarantino presents Eli Roth’s HOSTEL, the follow-up to the writer-director’s hit debut, 2002’s CABIN FEVER. More grisly than Roth’s feature bow, HOSTEL is a mixture of many of the most terrifying things about human nature and the world at large, culled from many impossible-but-true stories of human trafficking, international organized crime, and sex tourism. Relentlessly graphic and deeply disturbing, the film is sure to shock even the most hard core genre fans.

So I guess I should be prepared to have a jumpy, paranoid wife for the next month…

Oh, thank god!

Oh, god, no!

Today we went to see two very good, very long movies: Munich and King Kong.

Munich (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was one of the best movies I’ve seen all year, and right up there with Syriana in terms of cerebral style and complex subject matter. Spielberg did a very good job of not trying to answer a question for the audience, instead laying out as many facts and viewpoints as he could about the morality of assassination and effectiveness of retribution. The acting was excellent, the story was tense and never action-movie-ish, and the flashbacks recreating the Munich massacre were unsettling (it happened three years before I was born, but the iconic image of the masked terrorist on the balcony has always made me uneasy). I cannot recommend this film enough; like Syriana or Good Night And Good Luck, the film’s subject is as relevant and difficult today as it was generations ago.

King Kong (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was also one of the best I’ve seen this year, but for entirely different reasons: it was pure escapist fantasy, but it was done so expertly and so convincingly that I lost myself in it. It was funny, brutal, touching, disgusting and engaging, and it looked remarkably real. Only once or twice did I think to myself, “Hey, that’s CG,” and that was during the wide shots of people running through the jungle or driving through 1930s New York; the Kong effects were nothing short of mindboggling. Peter Jackson did it again; he took a beloved, oft-told tale and told it again, finding a new — and ultimately truer — way to tell it.

[UPDATE | 3 Jan: I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking about Munich, kept running over it in my head, especially the scenes of the massacre. It’s obviously affecting me even more than I thought it would.]

It’s the last day of our vacation. sniff.

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We watched the entire second season of Arrested Development over the past few days. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…there’s something profoundly wrong with American network TV if Fox cancels that show while Skating With The Stars and Meet Your New Mommy get to stay on the air. I like how David Cross puts it: maybe, instead of canceling the award-winning show, you should fire the marketing department that doesn’t know how to sell it.

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To go along with yesterday being new year’s day, we watched 200 Cigarettes (imdb | rotten tomatoes). It was less than great. Here’s my recommendation if you should find yourself watching it: fast forward through any scene that doesn’t have Paul Rudd or Dave Chappelle in it.

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I’m so tired of political “scandals” like this income trust kafuffle. I like Jack Layton but he’s waaaaaaay off base when he says “[W]hen a minister’s department is under criminal investigation … the minister should step away from his duties until the investigation is complete.” It’s innocent until proven guilty, Jack, remember? If an allegation or suggestion of wrongdoing was sufficient cause to remove a minister, we’d see new allegations pop up every week just to cast doubt on the sitting party. If I go to the newspapers and say that Stephen Harper promises future defense contracts to his favourite male prostitute, should he just step aside until his name is cleared? Of course not.

If an investigation turns up inappropriate behaviour, toss Goodale out. But not before.

If you’ve read this post over on Skirl you’ll see that I’m no longer updating this blog. It just doesn’t make much sense to run two different sites, you know?

It’s been cool to scan back through some of my really old entries, stuff that I imported (kinda) from my old custom posting-software database, like this review of my first Sigur Ros concert in September 2001, this review of a Trail Of Dead show, or this post about a Spiritualized concert in which I make fun of some of my fellow concert-goers.

Head on over to Skirl; I’ll be talking about the same stuff, just mixed in with a bunch of personal crap that you may not want to read. Tough cookies, scooter. Get used to it.