My Blu-ray copies of 28 Days Later (imdb | rotten tomatoes) and Sunshine (imdb | rotten tomatoes) just arrived.
That is all.
Category: Movies
Turns out I own clothes that I've never even worn
Each weekend starts with the intention of seeing The Wrestler. Each weekend ends with us having failed.
Friday night would have been an ideal candidate but, well, being tired and wanting to watch BSG won out. Put another way: we are old. Yesterday Nellie and I were both busy, and we went to Mercatto for dinner on a lark…very tasty. I can see that becoming our regular Italian place. Anyway, long story short: it was cold as balls outside so we didn’t stray far from home. Plus, we don’t relish the idea of the Scotiabank theatre on a Saturday night, chock full of middling teenagers ambling into screenings of Paul Blart: Mall Cop.
Today the timing just didn’t work, especially after Nellie undertook her ideal Sunday pastime of sleeping until noon. I used this alone time to destroy her best time in Wii Fit Advanced Snowboard and other similar accomplishments. Then we had breakfast, got groceries and went on a badass cleaning binge. I’m talking an almighty purge, people…stuff getting thrown out, recycled, put on Craigslist*…there’s a Goodwill pile here the size of a Shetland pony.
Time for the weekend summary. Pluses: relaxing, tasty, productive. Minuses: boring, lame. 3-2, w00t!!
* speaking of: anybody want a slightly used Roomba? Two wooden Ikea folding chairs? A crystal punch bowl?
You know that scene in A Clockwork Orange where they pry his eyelids open? Does that work? 'Cause I might give it a whirl.
Now that the Oscar nominations are out, and I feel like I should watch most, if not all, of the films up for major awards, it dawns on me how much watchin’ I have to do. I have to see The Visitor, Frost/Nixon, The Wrestler, Doubt, Revolutionary Road, Rachel Getting Married, The Reader, Encounters at the End of the World and Man on Wire. Not to mention The Changeling, Frozen River, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Kung Fu Panda, Happy-Go-Lucky, In Bruges, The Betrayal, The Garden and Trouble the Water. Gak!
That doesn’t even include the best foreign film nominees. I’ve only see one — Waltz With Bashir — but since it kicked ass, I’m just gonna go ahead and assume it’ll win so I don’t feel so bad.
"I'd say I'm a pretty darn good father. My father tried to eat me, I don't remember trying to eat Timmy."
I forgot to blog about some movies we cleared off the PVR lately. Here they are, from worst to best:
The Notorious Bettie Page (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a pretty by-the-numbers biopic. Traumatic childhood? Check. Rapid-fire sequence of life events? Check. Great performance by a single actor who’s on the screen for every second of the film? Check. The cinematography was pretty slick, and Gretchen Mol was undeniably hot, but yeah…the same thing we’ve seen many times, if done a little better perhaps.
Fido (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was silly, grisly fun. Here’s the gist: Billy Connolly plays a zombie living with an uptight family in the 50s. The mother of the family is Trinity from The Matrix. The Zombies are always a hair’s breadth away from murdering the humans. Hilarity ensues.
Into The Wild (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was spectacular to look at and, while I thought I would hate the main character (from what I read about Christopher McCandless he seemed annoying, and for some reason I strongly dislike Emile Hirsch, the actor who played him) but I actually got to like the character as he was portrayed, and the supporting actors were all good. But the film just looks incredible in HD…that was reason enough to watch it.
"They said I was gonna die soon but, maybe not."
There are some directors whose movies I will go see no matter what. The four who come to mind are Michael Mann, Werner Herzog, Danny Boyle and David Fincher. Three days ago we watched Boyle’s latest; today it was Fincher’s.
I’ve been anxiously awaiting The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (imdb | rotten tomatoes) since seeing the first trailer, as the first films pairing Fincher and Brad Pitt — Seven and Fight Club — are two of my all-time favourites. This was a much different offering than those films, but it still had the remarkable texture that Fincher is able to create in his projects. I didn’t think either of the lead performances (Pitt and Cate Blanchett) were that remarkable; instead what astounded me was how they showed Button reverse-age from a shriveled old man to a young boy, and it never looked fake or ridiculous, and the whole time it still looked like Brad Pitt. Good use of effects without being stupid about it. Nice.
I think it’ll take me a few days to figure out whether I really loved it or not. Right now I’m still wandering around that soft, dreamy headspace this sort of movie puts me in.
Movies with hyphens
Forgot to blog about two movies I watched recently:
WALL-E (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a marvel…that they could wring so much emotion and empathy out of a robotic main character who doesn’t speak is a testament not just to Pixar’s technical wizardry, but to their storytelling prowess as well. Some people railed about the anti-consumerism message in the film, but I think it’s just Pixar reading the zeitgeist. For example, two weeks ago I heard my nine-year-old nephew wondering aloud about sales/marketing tactics at Wendy’s…”I wonder if they call it a Frosty because that makes kids think about Frosty the Snowman?”, “Did they ask you to biggie-size it? Because they’ll always ask you to biggie-size it!”, and so on. Apparently my nephew has read No Logo.
Stop-loss (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was…well, something less than a marvel. It wasn’t terrible by any means, but I don’t think it revealed anything new about the Iraq war, or war in general. It was about some great-looking soldiers and their girlfriends (it was an MTV production, after all) dealing with war in the way that lets them look as cool as possible while still looking dramatically tortured. Because of that I found it difficult to take the movie too seriously.
As is customary
As is customary we spent New Year’s Day in a movie theatre. We watched Slumdog Millionaire (imdb | rotten tomatoes), even though I’d seen it at the festival, because I promised Nellie I would, and anyway I loved it so I hardly minded watching it again. We also saw Milk (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which was excellent. Everything you’ve heard about Sean Penn’s performance is true, and every other actor with a major role — James Franco, Josh Brolin and Emile Hirsch — was great as well. Just once, though, I would like to see Diego Luna in a film where I didn’t want to punch him in the face.
As is customary I will not publish any lists of my favourite films, music or songs until later in 2009. I never see all the big films or listen to all the big albums before the end of the year, so it’s usually March before I weigh in. Not that any of you really care, but I enjoy deluding myself like this.
Let me get this straight
This movie — the upcoming I Love You, Man (imdb) — stars Paul ‘captain awesome’ Rudd, Jason Segel and Andy Samberg. It co-stars my girlfriend du jour Rashida Jones. The trailer is funny and features songs by Vampire Weekend and The Pixies.
Can I go see this right now?!?
If not, I'm gonna have a lifetime supply of coasters
I’ve acquired a scant 11 DVDs this year, by far the fewest since I started keeping track of these things, and almost certainly the fewest since I bought a DVD player in 2000. Three of those — American Psycho, Full Metal Jacket and S.W.A.T. — came free when Nellie got me a Blu-Ray player, and Full Metal Jacket‘s the only one I would’ve even thought about buying otherwise. Another — Persepolis — was a gift, and another — Forgetting Sarah Marshall — my wife bought, not me.
Even if I count all 11, it’s still less than the number of books I bought this year…again, probably the first time that’s happened since at least 2000.
When I was a kid my parents bought a ton of movies on VHS, partially because we all like to re-watch movies, and partially because in the middle of nowhere with only two or three TV channels, you have to stockpile your entertainment options. I kept that mentality when I began buying for myself, building a library, buying 30 or 40 movies some years. Movies aren’t completely on-demand for me yet, but I can feel it getting close; I guess that’s why I’ve stopped hording.
Now then…anyone want to buy ~250 DVDs?
"It feels like I'm shitting a knife!"
Our aspirational target this weekend was profound laziness. While we didn’t quite hit that (damn stretch goals) we did manage to watch two movies:
Baby Mama (imdb | rotten tomatoes) started off badly — not that the jokes weren’t funny, it’s just that we’d seen them all in the trailer — but got funnier as it went on. This post’s title, a line from the film, made me laugh out loud. I’m still giggling just typing it. Let’s face it, though, Tina Fey could do the New York Times crossword on camera for 90 minutes and I’d still pay to see it.
I think we waited too long to see Tropic Thunder (imdb | rotten tomatoes) ’cause I just didn’t like it. I liked how it skewered movie-making in general, and action movies in particular, but I’m not sure I really laughed at single line not uttered by Danny McBride. And Tom Cruise’s tiny part, the one that’s earned him a fricking Golden Globe nomination? Not so much with the funny.
Here, I’ll give you an example of funny, and it just happens to involve Tina Fey. It’s from last Thursday’s episode of 30 Rock:
Liz: “Jack, do you know the Postmaster General?”
Jack: “I do, but we had a falling out over the Jerry Garcia stamp. If I wanted to lick a hippie I’d just return Joan Baez’s phone calls.”
Bam.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 