Slumdog Millionaire, my favourite film at this year’s TIFF (and winner of the festival’s audience prize) has been named best film of 2008 by the National Board of Review.
I’m telling you, if you haven’t seen this film yet, go now.
Category: Movies
"My voice is a signal calling out"
Let’s see, what’ve I been consuming lately?
- The season finale of True Blood was pretty good, but I’ll be curious to see if they can keep it up another season.
- I don’t even know why I still enjoy Entourage (beyond the obvious Piven-ness) but I do.
- The new Fembots album Calling Out is very good.
- As much as I can’t wait to watch the final two episodes of The Shield, I really don’t want it to end.
- I’ve watched four movies in the past couple of weeks: Monkey Warfare (very Parkdale-indie), You Kill Me (ridiculous and implausible, but fun), L’Enfant (realistic, troubling and bleak) and Rails & Ties (predictable, melodramatic and wooden at times).
- Lots of hockey and basketball too, but both my teams are slumping right now, so…yeah. Lots of Wii tennis.
- The Future of Management by Gary Hamel was a very good book if you’re ever wondering why we’ve spent the last century innovating new business practices, but not new management practices.
"You and me both, man. That thing is lucky I'm not armed."
Wired published an article last week called “Five Useless Gadgets You Should Throw in the Trash Right Now.” Setting aside the environmentally-unfriendliness of that for a second, I wonder how reasonable it would be for the average person to eschew everything on that list. I’m pretty accepting of technology, but all other things being equal I won’t adopt something — or get rid of it — if doing so constrains me. Their list was:
- printers
- scanners
- built-in optical drives
- fax machines
- landline phones
There’s only one thing on that list I could entirely live without: fax machines. I don’t own one but I have to occasionally use one for work, but only when there’s no other way. I always put up a fight before resorting to faxing. I rarely use my scanner (usually it’s in an attempt to avoid faxing…I scan and email a signed document) but I wouldn’t even bother to own one unless it was built into my printer. Speaking of which…I don’t use my printer that often (a standard 500-sheet pack of paper will last me a few years) but there are still enough cases where I can’t avoid it, like boarding passes until everyone sorts out the emailed/texted version. Optical drives are something else I barely use…when I got my new computer I installed some software from CD, but only because there’s where I had it. I’m sure I could have downloaded most of it just as easily. In this case it cost me nothing to include a CD writer and would have saved me nothing to take it out, and at least this way I can still make CDs for my dad, so I got one.
The landline phone seems to be the one I can’t get rid of. I suppose this is mainly because I don’t have a mobile. With my Blackberry (which isn’t voice-enabled) I haven’t needed one, and wouldn’t get one just to replace my landline. While I know lots of people who do use a cell instead of a landline, I think Canadian mobile pricing makes it a less attractive option here than elsewhere.
By the way, that title is one of the lines from Office Space, when Samir and Michael want to kill the printer/copier. When I checked imdb to verify I had the line right, I noticed that pretty much every line in the film is listed in the ‘memorable quotes’ section. Here’s my suggestion for how to quantify the ‘cult-ness’ of a movie: (imdb memorable quote page length) ÷ (movie script length).
"Why are you giving me one useless piece of information at a time?"
We just watched M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film The Happening (imdb | rotten tomatoes). The regret from that one will linger for a while. Not even the deep, lovely pools of water that are Zooey Deschanel’s eyes could save that one, as they were often closed against the burning intensity of Mark Wahlberg’s awfulness.
I think I’ll go watch Unbreakable or Signs a few times.
Things I've learned in the past 24 hours
- I’m getting sick. Not enough to make me feel like I need to stay in bed, but enough to drain me of all energy and motivation to, you know, move.
- The Rob Zombie remake of Halloween (imdb | rotten tomatoes) started off better than I expected, in that it gave us a Michael Myers preview, but the remake part was just standard slasher fare. The only thing I liked better about it than the original was that Myers moved like a normal guy…fast sometimes, normal speed the rest of the time, instead of at a slow zombie pace.
- Sometimes our cats will sleep quietly through the night. Other times they will stage a Bob Fosse revival on our bed at 3AM. Last night was the latter.
- We need a new coffee table and over-sized (but not too over-sized) chair, but aren’t having much luck finding them. Lo and behold, I read this in Thursday’s issue of Now, and figure we should give it a try.
- Even when the Canadiens are down 4-1 going into the third period, I should still finish watching the game, especially when it’s against a soft team like the Islanders. The Habs scored 4 goals in the third period and won. They’re playing .850 hockey so far this season, the best of any team in the NHL.
- The Raptors look pretty good, having won their third in a row to remain perfect in this young season. Bosh looks better with O’Neal there to take the pressure off, Bargnani looks better coming off the bench than he does starting, Calderon looks better without the T.J. Ford of Damocles hanging over his head, and Kapono just looks better. But the defense is what seemed different last night…not all the time, but a lot of the time. Players like Michael Redd and Richard Jefferson have carved through the Raptors like butter in recent years, but last night, the Raps seemed to challenge more. Anyway, we’ll see how they fare against real competition like the Celtics or Lakers.
- John McCain isn’t funny.
Honestly, I don't know who's more pissed
Nellie because they’re remaking Footloose with Zak Efron in the lead, or me because Zeppelin may tour sans Robert Plant.
Actually, I do know who’s more pissed: Nellie, because she knows her nightmare scenario is more likely. I know that Zep fans would never stand for a tour without Robert Plant, whereas the average movie studio head would have no trouble breaking the heart of an entire generation of girls and gay men if it meant stealing a single box office weekend.
"This is Ground Zero. This is my site."
We watched I Am Legend (imdb | rotten tomatoes) yesterday. It was a little better than I was expecting. [WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD]
New York looked great: the overgrowth, the isolation, the decay…it all looked amazing. The animation, though, especially on the infected…ugh. Bad. Like, took-you-out-of-the-moment bad. So that was unfortunate.
Oh, and any movie that puts an adorable animal in jeopardy for long periods of time will make me extremely tense, and if/when that animal eventually dies, I will get sad and pouty and kind of want the main character to die, just to make it fair. So bravo, writers…you’ve kicked off a depression among my wife and I not seen since we watched Sharkwater two weeks ago.
Please be kidding. Please be kidding. Please be kidding.
From Yahoo: ‘Porno’ proves a five-letter word for movie’s ads.
Some newspaper, TV and outdoor ads for Smith’s comedy “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” have been rejected because of their content or the five-letter word that ends the title, said Gary Faber, head of marketing for the Weinstein Co., which is releasing the film.
Among those refusing to carry ads are about 15 newspapers and several TV stations and cable channels, Faber said. Commercials for the film during Los Angeles Dodgers games on Fox Sports were dropped at the team’s request after some viewers complained, said Dodgers spokesman Josh Rawitch.
It was dumb enough that the MPAA banned these posters. This is just…yeah.
How Beverly Hills Chihuahua wins the box office two weekends in a row
[via Indexed]
L-tryptophan or not, I'm damn sleepy
You would think that Thanksgiving dinner sans turkey wouldn’t be that filling.
You’d be wrong.
I hurt.
[Note: I’m glad we didn’t do something weird like cook fish. We watched Sharkwater (imdb | rotten tomatoes) just before dinner and it’s kind of put me off fish for a while.]
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 