Russell Means, a former American Indian Movement activist who helped lead the 1973 uprising at Wounded Knee, reveled in stirring up attention and appeared in several Hollywood films, has died. He was 72.
.:.
Photo by wallyg, used under Creative Commons license
Public service announcement: Battleship (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was exactly as bad as you’d expect it to be. Steer clear.
.:.
Photo by derekGavey, used under Creative Commons license
I’ve noticed something: I only remember to blog about movies when I watch a good movie. Hence:
.:.
This weekend was broken up more or less by what we were drinking at the time:
Friday: Foreign Affair Riesling, Fielding Pinot Gris, Norm Hardie Pinot Noir, and Hamelin Bay Rampant Red (which made us regret not getting down to Hamelin Bay last fall whilst in the Margaret River) at REDS; Cattail Creek Four Mile Creek Riesling, Weingut Hirsch Gruner Veltliner, Argiolas Costera Cannonau, Ca del Monte Valpolicella Ripasso, Bilogia Tempranillo, Indigena Garnaxta, and something else I don’t remember at Midfield
Saturday: Weihenstephaner Kristall, Beau’s Lugtread, Blanche de Chambly, La Trappe Tripel, and a sunburn at Against The Grain Urban Tavern; a bottle of Hidden Bench 2008 Terroir Caché with dinner (after which I felt like crap, though I don’t blame the wine)
Sunday: an ill-advised Rickard’s White on the temporary on-Yonge-Street patio at the Firkin on Yonge (!); bottles of Kacaba 2008 Syrah and Daniel Lenko 2008 Unoaked Chardonnay when our friend Kaylea dropped in for an impromptu visit; a bottle of Norm Hardie 2010 County Chardonnay with dinner.
Three things about The Dark Knight Rises (imdb | rotten tomatoes):
In a nod to one of my very favourite music-centric movies, there is a music blog out there called “WHAT F**KING IAN GUY?” which movie (and Nick Hornby) fans will recognize as one of the funnier lines from High Fidelity (imdb | rotten tomatoes). They seem to drop a couple of obscure tunes every day, some of which are quite good. It’s been added to my news feeds; I suggest you do the same.
I’d never heard of the site, and I have to say that for about twenty minutes there I felt very out of the music blog loop, but then realized that the blog is barely a month old. Phew. Rest easy, people, I’m still in music’s geeky inner-ish circle.
Seriously though, what in the name of Charlie Nicholson happened to John Cusack? Leading up to High Fidelity he’d done movies like Grosse Pointe Blank, The Thin Red Line, The Jack Bull, Being John Malkovich, and Con Air. Okay, that last one was a paycheck. But since he played Rob Gordon it’s like he fell off a critical cliff: America’s Sweethearts, Serendipity, Runaway Jury, Must Love Dogs, War Inc., 2012, Hot Tub Time Machine, The Raven…blerg. I mean, Max and Grace Is Gone were slight returns, but that’s a pretty sudden change in direction right around the turn of the millennium. Too bad.
.:.
Photo from mueredecine, used under Creative Commons license
Somehow, in the couple of months that it’s been in theatres, we’ve managed not to see The Avengers (imdb | rotten tomatoes) even once. Finally, with a little bit of time to spare during the week, we rectified that error.
But first, a bite to eat: I met Nellie at The Oxley, which has quickly become my favourite watering hole in Yorkville, mainly because all other Yorkville watering holes suck huge, save the flight deck at The Pilot. It has a smashing burger and interesting beer and a fantastic back patio, which is more than enough to make it my new work local. Anyway, when I arrived Nellie had staked out a position on the patio…which would have been fine, except that Toronto has been hotter than a marathoner’s armpit all week and I was wearing a dark suit. Anywayanyway: food good, drinks cold, back to theatre.
So we were a bit dawdly getting there and actually had the time wrong, so we got there five minutes late…or, in today’s theatre-going experience, just before the ads finished playing and just before the previews began. We each had time to pee out all remaining beer before the movie even started. Unbeknownst to us, though, we had elected to see it in 3D. Which I hate. Super, super-hate. But I’ll try not to let that ruin my impression of the movie.
That impression: it was great. Lots and lots of fun, and funny. Especially The Hulk; he had a couple of classic comedy moments, which I appreciated far more than Tony Stark’s non-stop sarcasm. But it was everything a comic book movie should be, and the special effects were stellar. I don’t know if I’ll bother buying it when it comes out on DVD — there’s not a lot of heft to it, if you know what I mean — but I’ll certainly watch it over and over when it comes on TMN. You know, two years from now.
.:.
Image from j_philipp, used under Creative Commons license
The best music I’ve bought lately, in no particular order:
OK, I may have fibbed just now. There was a tiny bit of order: the new Japandroids was at the top of that list because in sheer rawk-awesomeness it outshines the others on the list.
.:.
Austerity pushers and vaccination kooks are giving kids in Washington State whooping cough. Or something. Warning: contains the eye-meltingly great line, “I hope there’s a hot place in Dumbass Hell for Jenny McCarthy.”
.:.
Recent movies we’ve watched:
.:.
I’ve been sending this article to just about every extrovert I know. Specifically the ones who think introversion is something they think they can help people “get over” by forcing them into social situations. Which is to say, all of them.
.:.
OK, so…the Eaton Centre shooting yesterday. Brutal. Tragic, obviously. Stupid.Worrying, sure, due to the premeditated gun violence carried out by multiple attackers on someone who is probably, at least according to early signals given by the police, directly or indirectly linked to a gang…worrying in the same way the Jane Creba shooting was. But not scary. Not to me, at least.
We know the questions will come about whether we’re worried about living five minutes away from the Eaton Centre (well, ten minutes from the end of the mall where this happened), but honestly it doesn’t feel that close. To be honest, I don’t even consider the Eaton Centre to be part of Toronto. It’s like this weird suburban amusement park wedged between the tackiest corridor of Yonge and ugliest stretch of Bay, in which no non-teenager valuing their sanity would set foot for more than a few moments, and into which no actual Torontonian would walk of their own volition. So that underground food court where the shooting took place seems to me like a far-flung, unknown corner of the city.
As it happened, Nellie and I walked through the mall (straight through, actually…there’s a shortcut from Yonge to the Mercatto abutting Trinity Square) about five hours before the shooting. Had we chosen to eat dinner there instead of a late lunch we would have been there for the shots (albeit two levels up) and would have rushed out with the rest. But even knowing that, there’s no feeling of fear due to proximity. It happened somewhere else.
.:.
Featured image by kata rokkar, used under Creative Commons license
Perhaps influenced by the supermoon, we decided to watch The Grey (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. I honestly didn’t expect a lot from it, but it was okay. Not great, but definitely entertaining. And Liam Neeson continues to have a special talent: making himself sound like the kind of guy who’s smiling and pulling you a pint whilst simultaneously threatening to beat you to death.
By the way, we only watched The Grey last night after trying to watch Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (imdb | rotten tomatoes) but giving up 35 minutes in. It was terrible. Seriously, terrible. We both wanted to keep watching to see if it got better, but it was just so annoying. One shudders to think how many bloody horse heads must have been slipped under Hollywood bedsheets to get that piece of crap on Oscar’s best picture shortlist. Blech.
.:.
Photo by Dennis From Atlanta, used under Creative Commons license
Every year we buy a Hot Docs festival pass, and every year something gets in the way of us seeing at least one of the films. This time it’s wisdom teeth. But we at least got to see a few:
The Imposter (imdb | flixster | hot docs) was carrying a lot of buzz from an earlier appearance at Sundance, and it didn’t disappoint. I was impressed with all three facets: the story, the style and the shooting. The story was so bizarre that it could only be told in a documentary…it would have seemed ridiculous in a typical film. The style involved a lot of recreations, a la Errol Morris, which Nellie hates but I saw as crucial to the story…with no actual footage, you needed some way to put yourself in these situations being recounted more than ten years later. The shooting itself was pretty remarkable…as the director himself said during the Q&A afterward there were influences like Morris and David Fincher, but I got a lot of The Usual Suspects in the mix as well. Overall, a fantastic start to the festival.
It only got better with Brooklyn Castle (imdb | hot docs) on Sunday. Focused on a middle school in Brooklyn that focuses on cranking out amazing chess players, but extending into their personal lives and struggles at school and the state education budget sword of Damocles, it was engaging and worrisome and funny and encouraging all at once. The crowd applauded several times during the film; I rarely stopped smiling for the last half hour. Also: there’s a certain kind of subject that documentary filmmakers must just flip out when they stumble on; in this film his name was Pobo. Once you watch the film — and you really must watch it, just as soon as you can — you won’t forget him, or the other kids, or the teachers, or the stories. This won the audience prize at SxSW, and I’d have to think it’s a favourite to win the audience award at Hot Docs as well.
Unfortunately, with that screening still fresh in my mind, it was inevitable that Fists Of Pride (imdb | hot docs) would be a letdown. The subject matter — Burmese kids living in a boxing camp along the Burmese/Thai border, trying to fight their way out of poverty — sounded compelling, but we never really got to identify with them, or see them fight for more than a few moments each, or find out what happened. It was like a story that just couldn’t find a conclusion. Not bad, but nowhere near the league of the two we’d seen to date.
We already know we’re missing scheduled documentary #4 (The World Before Her) on Wednesday; if we’re lucky we’ll get to see Sexy Baby on Friday. Even if we can’t, our first weekend of the festival was worth the price of five admissions.
.:.
Photo by Alfred Hermida, used under Creative Commons license
Last weekend Danelle and I went with a bunch of friends to see The Cabin In The Woods (imdb | flixster) at the AMC. I’d harbored no desire to see it; based on the previews it looked like another dumb, formulaic slasher film.
But then I saw the reviews. 90%+ on Rotten Tomatoes. Okay then.
So yeah, I saw the movie. And now I know that the dumb, formulaic slasher film is exactly what they’re playing off. It had elements of that by-the-numbers, but it presented them as if to suggest that all the rote procedurals you’ve seen before have been the work of an off-screen deus ex machina. So it was clever.
It was also really, really goddamned funny. Probably the most I’ve laughed in a movie theatre since Bridesmaids. Putting Brad Whitford and Richard Jenkins — two actors of way higher calibre than you’d expect in a movie like this, which probably should have tipped me off — in their roles and letting them run was a great move. Of course, the script had to be good, and Nellie pointed out at least eleven times before we watched the movie that it was written and directed by Drew Goddard — ex of Buffy, Alias, Angel and Lost — so this was clearly in his wheelhouse.
Make no mistake, it’s a violent movie too — incredibly, and actually comically so at times — lest you think bringing your kids along is a good idea. But if you like self-referential + self-aware (kind of like winking at the very fact that it’s winking at the audience) genre films that make you laugh, and don’t mind some ridiculously savage violence mixed in, this is your new jam.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 