Category: Movies

"I have just met you, and I love you."

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Well, I’ve had an enjoyable forty-ish hours. It started Friday night when we walked down to Front Street to see this year’s criterium. I have no real interest in cycling, but it’s fun to watch racing on a downtown street. Plus, it gave me a chance to test out our new camera: a Canon SX10 IS. We used to have an S3 but sold it when Nellie got her Nikon SLR. I still have a little Canon S230, which is fine for carrying around in my pocket if we’re out with friends, but it turns out there was too big a gap between that and the D40. This SX10 feels familiar (it’s basically just the update of the S3 we had before), is a pretty good mix of convenience and quality, and the 20x zoom will come in handy. For example:

These guys were way down Front Street when I took that. Anyway, we couldn’t stay long as we had dinner reservations at Canoe with Nellie’s mom, so home we went to get all gussied up. Canoe was magnificent, as one would expect, and lives so comfortably in their place atop the Toronto restaurant pile (according to Toronto Life, anyway). Nellie and her mom started with the chevre with rosemary brioche, I had the prawn & asparagus chowder with tarragon butter, and we shared a bottle of 2007 Fielding viognier. For our mains I had the caribou (which was amazing), Nellie and her mom had the prime ribeye and we took a 2006 a bottle of Domaine Gardies Mas Les Cabes. No dessert, just dessert wine for Nellie and I and a glass of white for her mom. Oh, and at some point the afore-mentioned mom took off her shoes and went for a stroll through the restaurant. Don’t ask.

The next day, after dropping Nellie’s mom off at the airport we went to see Up (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at Yonge & Dundas. I’m not a big animation fan, and while I did like the last two Pixar releases (Ratatouille and wall-e) I didn’t bother to see them in the theatre. However, a screaming 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and a lot of advance critical praise made this one my top movie theatre priority this weekend. And it was good. Really, really good. It was sweet, funny, entertaining and (of course) spectacularly animated. Fun story, too, like Raiders Of The Lost Ark if Indy were an octagenarian. In the end I think it might have actually been a mistake to see it in the theatre, since the kid and mother behind me who talked often — and loudly — occasionally “pulled me” out of the film. But I’m still glad I saw it yesterday.

The movies weren’t done there. We freed up a little more room on the PVR by watching Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which I kind of liked (bizarre mismatched music notwithstanding) but I felt it would have made a better short film than feature. There were so many repeated scenes and long tracking shots that nine minutes likely would’ve done it.

We also finally got around to watching the pilot of Glee (fox | onion a.v. club), which I found fairly funny, but if the singing keeps up like this I may struggle to keep watching. I can only take so much Amy Winehouse and Journey. While we watched that a killer rainstorm passed over Toronto, followed quickly by a brilliant rainbow (and another faint cousin):

Also, at some point this weekend I finished reading The Blind Side (amazon) by Michael Lewis. Only about a quarter of the book was what I expected it to be — an historic and financial look at the left tackle position in football. Instead it focused on a kid named Michael Oher, and told a very engaging story about his life. There is, in fact, a movie being adapted from it but with Sandra Bullock cast as one of the leads I don’t hold out much hope for it not sucking.

With that book done I’ve taken the advice given to me over the years by several friends, including those who’d just finished with my copy, and begun reading The Long Walk To Freedom.

Unfortunately it’s a bit too chilly out today to enjoy the sun the way we’d like, but that gives us a good excuse to tackle yet another chunk of the PVR’s hard drive.

I'm off the case

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Tonight I began the long, onerous task of removing my roughly 250 movies from their cases and jamming them into a giant CD wallet. This is the second phase of the great media pack-up. Back in February I finally ditched all my CD cases, though they and the original CDs had been boxed up and sitting in a closet for four years. Now it’s the DVDs.

The plastic DVD cases will be…I dunno, thrown out, I guess. While I’m entirely used to seeing them out and occupying yards of shelf space, Nellie thought they were ugly. I suppose she’s right. They’re just hunks of plastic. I don’t know though, I’m worried that without the ability to scan a shelf and see something that jumps out at me, I’ll just stop watching these. For the most part I own only movies that I’d want to see over and over again; how will my viewing habits change now that they’re out of sight? I grew up in a place where books, movies and music occupied every inch of the (rather formidable) shelf space in our living room, not to mention the books covering pretty much every other flat horizontal piece of wood in the house, so it feels weird for me to put them away.

I suppose at some point when I get around to procuring a media server I’ll buy myself a giant hard drive and start ripping these films and TV series, and watch them that way. I’m not quite there yet; not that I don’t like the technology, just that I haven’t felt a strong need to do so. Nor have I just seen it as a logical extension I’d already taken, as I did by streaming the music files I’d already made the ‘master copy’ of my music.

The books, I suppose, will be the last to go. Again, I have nothing against eBooks, I just haven’t had any incentive to switch so far. Besides, I think Nellie’s soft spot for having books on the shelves is almost as big as mine.

On an unrelated note: anybody need a couple hundred empty DVD cases?

"The devil's hands have been busy"

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After watching Terminator: Salvation (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night Nellie said, “Whoever made the trailer for that movie should win an Oscar.” If you haven’t yet seen said trailer, watch it here. Note the awesomeness, not the least of which is the note-perfect use of Nine Inch Nails.

After seeing the movie, I think whoever made the trailer should also be charged with fraud. It didn’t live up to the trailer. But you can’t really fault the trailer for being good, so here was my problem with the movie: I kept giving it chances, and it kept letting me down. I went into it with low expectations — I’d read the bad reviews and seen the poor ratings on RT — but I was pleasantly surprised by the first half of the film. It wasn’t bad.

It wasn’t great, either — the dialogue could be a little wooden, we both felt the Kyle Reese character was strangely played, and I thought Common was a great example of the latest in a string of rappers who can’t act — but it was interesting and the action sequences were very good. I actually started to believe that this could end well. But when it entered the final act, it just went sideways and got ridiculous. Completely fell down. I knew I shouldn’t have expected much from a McG-directed Terminator, but I think I was ultimately more frustrated by knowing, as Nellie said last night, that there was a good movie in there somewhere.

"You can whistle really loud, you know that?"

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Victoria Day, shmictoria day. This was movie day. We watched four:

Star Trek (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was as good as advertised. I don’t want to say too much about the plot in case you haven’t seen it, but I like how they handled the reboot. Good action, great pacing (you basically sit down and whammo, two hours later, it all stops and you go home), funny in parts and lots of little nods to the original series, some of which I probably didn’t even get. A highly entertaining summer movie, to be certain.

The Reader (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a bit of a disappointment. Granted, by waiting so long to see it I was already aware of the two biggest ‘surprise’ points of the film, but even so, I didn’t think it was great. I think it’s another great example of a make-up Oscar being given to an actor — Kate Winslet — who deserved to win it for a past role. OK, but not great, and certainly not good enough to make the best picture shortlist.

For some reason I recorded The Strangers (imdb | rotten tomatoes) earlier this week and we watched it today. That was a mistake. Rubbish. Sufficiently creepy for the first half, but dumb cliche and crap plot from then on. Waste of time. Avoid.

After all that violent shlock we decided to change gears and go for light and goofy. Get Smart (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was both of those. Not hilarious, but amusing here and there. Not much of a story, but you know…it’s Get Smart. I wouldn’t recommend anyone go out of their way to see this, but if you notice it’s on, there are worse things you could watch. Oh, and Anne Hathaway: hideous. I can barely stand to look at her.

And here endeth the movieathon. Tomorrow it’s back to the office, like the rest of the British empire.

I smell Oscar

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The Cove, my favourite film at this year’s Hot Docs, has won the audience prize, just as it did at Sundance. Hopefully that gives it some momentum heading into more festivals and then wide(ish) release this summer.

Cinematical has more coverage, as does the CBC. The latter’s comment thread, predictably, has descended into a debate about the seal hunt. It actually came up in the form of a question to the filmmaker’s at the screening last week, but none of them knew anything about it and so didn’t comment. Or maybe they just didn’t want to divide the crowd and hurt their chances at the audience prize…

The Cove

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Tuesday night Nellie and I went to see a Hot Docs screening that I’d been both looking forward to and dreading. The Cove (hot docs | imdb) has been on my radar since it won the audience award at Sundance and Scott Weinberg at Cinematical wrote this review. I knew any documentary about saving dolphins would be right my up alley, but this line from his review gave me pause:

“I’ve seen hundreds of horror movies in my time, and I’ve never seen anything quite as disturbing as the final sequences of The Cove.”

Here’s the thing: I don’t deal well with scenes, even staged/acted ones, of animals being hurt or killed. The video for Mogwai‘s “Hunted By A Freak”, even though it was animated, haunted me for days because it featured a crazy man dropping pets off a rooftop. So I was worried that The Cove would give me nightmares or something. But it won’t. Make no mistake, there were some incredibly disturbing scenes of violence perpetrated against dolphins in this film, and as Weinberg said the final scenes were the worst. They weren’t quite as graphic as I thought they might be based on his description, but I think my mouth dropped open at the sheer scale of the carnage. Hundreds of dolphins slaughtered at a time, more than twenty thousand a year, all in this tiny cove…and all so pointlessly.

I won’t get into it all here, I’ll just tell you to go see the film. It might not sound appealing from my description, but that’s just because I’m still a little freaked out by it. It really was a great documentary — the only 5/5 I’ve given this week — with lots of suspense, stunning underwater shots, political intrigue, interesting character stories…even a mild car chase or two. Please, go see it when it comes to theatres this summer. Or rent it. Or if you can’t do either of those things, here’s one simple way to make a difference: stop going to fucking Seaworld.

First day of Hot Docs

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We saw two Hot Docs screenings today: Orgasm Inc. (hot docs) and Carmen Meets Borat (hot docs).

Orgasm Inc. turned out to be more interesting than I expected. I guess I’d forgotten what it was about between when I selected it and when I watched it today. The overriding theme of this year’s festival seems to be the economy, and money in general, and that was the angle that came out here.

Here’s the basic synopsis: Viagra is introduced and makes a bazillion dollars for Pfizer. Pharma companies realize they’re only reaching half the population, though, so the hunt for so-called female Viagra begins. Now realizing that they need to create demand for this, they use questionable research/statistical methods to trumpet the fact that 43% of American women have some kind of sexual dysfunction, and thus the clinical term Female Sexual Dysfunction is born. Now American women think there’s something wrong with them, and hucksters are telling them it can be fixed with a pill. Of course, no one’s profiting too much yet because the pills keep failing placebo tests, and the FDA rejected Procter & Gamble’s attempt. But don’t worry, all you useless malfunctioning women, soon there’ll be a $10 pill for you.

OK, moving on before I get too mad. In short, the content of the documentary was excellent, but the execution — the film itself — was sloppy and felt amateurish. I gave it a 3/5.

Carmen Meets Borat was much lighter (although Orgasm Inc. did have several laughs), showing life in what must surely be the most awful village in all of Europe: Glod, Romania. It’s where the opening scenes of Borat were filmed, passed off as Kazakhstan, and the villagers weren’t in on the jokes. They were, understandably, annoyed. But the main focus of the documentary is a girl named Carmen, and the changes she and her family went through at the same time as — and occasionally because of — Borat. Then the world’s slimiest lawyers show up and it does downhill. Anyway, it was an example of a documentary that covers a fairly insignificant topic, but covers it very well, and benefits from a little luck. I gave it 4/5.

Nothing tomorrow; I’ll be at work anyway. Also, I have two tickets to a screening of Reporter at 9:30 on Monday night at the Isabel Bader theatre if anyone would like them, free of charge. I’ll be at a Mogwai concert.

"Death is the road to awe."

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Over the last few days, in between spring cleaning and sucking back Cadbury easter eggs, I’ve watched a few movies in an attempt to rescue our PVR from the crushing weight of so many hours recorded:

The Last Winter (imdb | rotten tomatoes) started off reasonably well by building tension in a remote Alaskan oil field, but to borrow a phrase from Western Canadian hockey fans: holy man did it ever die. It took a nose dive of truly epic proportion right around the time that [spoiler alert, but it’s so ridiculous that you wouldn’t believe me anyway] the giant ghost moose showed up. Yeah, you read that right. I guess it might’ve been an elk or caribou, but it was definitely some kind of giant green ghostly quadriped with antlers. I think they tried to pass it off as Windigo, but…yeesh. Not even Connie Britton in her underwear could salvage this. I am stunned that it scored 79% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Similar pattern for Hancock (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which started off funny and kind of interesting, then got dumb, then got cheesy. Will Smith had lots of good lines at the beginning but then…droop mope yawn boring.

Fortunately The Fountain (imdb | rotten tomatoes) didn’t follow the same pattern as the other two films. Actually, it didn’t follow any pattern. I’m still processing it, to be honest, and I think it’ll take me a few days to figure out whether or not I liked it. It certainly felt like an accomplishment, to weave those three stories together so tightly…I just struggle with whether the stories were good. Whether they should have been woven together. I also struggle with how Hugh Jackman seems to constantly act as if he’s on a broadway stage, in that over-enunciating, shouting for the back of the house, bare your teeth kind of way. Anyway, that’s a different topic. I guess the fact that it’s stuck with me for several hours says something. Those other two films faded like like a fart in the mist.

Garbage in, garbage ou…uh, actually, I guess in this case garbage stays.

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Not long ago, on the way home from work my Zen randomly played “Eat Junk Become Junk” by Six By Seven. While I listened I studied the subway ad in front of me. It was an ad for an MTV reality show. I couldn’t help but make the connection.

“Eat junk become junk” is just another way of saying “you are what you eat”, something we’ve all heard since we were kids. No one really doubts that the badness of what we eat affects our overall health. It’s not the sole determining factor, obviously, but it does matter. Doctors, medical studies, common sense…they all tell us so.

So why doesn’t the adage apply to music? Why not books? Why not movies or television? Aren’t the worst of these just empty calories, the Twinkies and triple-bacon cheeseburgers of culture? Aren’t people just jamming the same crap into a different orifice? I would think we would consider these toxic materials as harmful to the mind as we consider toxic food harmful to the body.

And yet, we hear people describe the benefit of vanilla TV (Two and a Half Men, anyone?) being that they don’t have to think, they can just have a laugh. They describe “beach books” the same way…something you just read but don’t have to think about. Worse yet, “reality tv” deliberately misleads viewers, making them think these shows are actually happening unscripted, trying to warp the viewer’s idea of reality rather than try to find entertaining reality to film. Music so banal and oversampled there’s no shred of musical innovation or feeling left at the heart of it. Movies slapped together to lampoon scene after 30-second scene of fleeting pop-cultural references funny mainly, and especially, to those whose news-gathering begins and ends with TMZ. At best these are vapid space-fillers; at worst, mind-numbing distortions. Alone they do not make you stupid. But they certainly lean that way.

Let me preempt the usual cry: that I’m arguing against fun. That’s a weak case, unless you would suggest “fun” can only equal “stupid”. Millions of things are fun, and funny without being weakly, patronizingly so.

Let’s maybe try showing this graphically. FlowingData recently posted a chart titled “Music that makes you dumb” courtesy of a CalTech grad student. It doesn’t show that listening to crap music makes you dumber. It just shows that people who listen to music like Lil’ Wayne, Carrie Underwood and Taking Back Sunday do worse on their SATs than those who listen to stuff like Radiohead, Bob Dylan and Beethoven.

Look, I’m not saying people should stop watching American Idol or listening to Nickelback any more than I’m saying they should avoid eating at Carl’s Jr. three times a day. I’m just saying that everyone knows they shouldn’t eat at Carl’s Jr. three times a day. For some reason they just haven’t figured out that it’s harmful to put other kinds of junk in their bodies too.