Since it’s 7:58PM and I’m still at work, this is about as much original, interesting thought as I can muster: while listening to The Last Waltz by The Band, it occurred to me that if there was a god, he would sound like Muddy Waters.
Actually, on further reflection, god’s voice would probably sound like Mark Lanegan‘s. I think the almighty would be a whiskey & Marlboro kind of guy.
[tags]the band, last waltz, muddy waters, god’s voice, mark lanegan[/tags]
The upcoming Mark Wahlberg movie Max Payne (imdb) is being shot in Toronto right now, and today from our balcony we could see some helicopter scenes being filmed. Actually, the helicopters have been buzzing around the sky above us pretty much non-stop since the early afternoon. You can see from this shot that helicopter #1 (which is part of the movie; the other chopper is unmarked and, I presume, has a camera and/or the director in it) was hovering over Yonge & King, roughly. If you click the next picture you’ll see the helicopter was marked “NPYD” so the people in One King West and BCE Place who weren’t informed of the movie shoot must’ve been awfully confused.
Eventually they peeled off from the downtown; they then set up so that the black helicopter hovered over the waterfront while the “NYPD” chopper did a high-speed lap around it. It circled out over the island, over the DVP and right over our building. Nellie got this great shot of it as it appeared overhead.
Hours later they were back at it, swooping back into the spot near One King West (which was lit up). Sadly, Nellie hasn’t quite figured out the nighttime settings on her new camera, and thinks she’d need a tripod for the shots anyway.
Anyway, apart from getting my haircut and buying a new garbage can, that was our excitement for the day.
[tags]max payne, mark wahlberg, one king west, bce place, toronto, helicopters[/tags]
As is so often the case, I am acquiring media faster than I can consume it. I now have 22 films on the PVR:
I also have a bunch of music piled up in the inbox:
Gotta finish that MBA. Or at least stop caring…
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Oh yeah, and I think I’ve broken my baby toe. But hey, at least the snow’s stopped and the sun’s shining.
[tags]broken toe[/tags]
This helicopter’s been hovering around just to the east of my building for most of the morning. Not sure what’s going on. Nellie says that if we see guys with rifles start sliding down any ziplines, we’re locking the door.
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I forgot to post about the Flickr song chart pool last week when I saw it. I lost a good hour one night going through it. Enjoy!
(by the way, this one should make any Buffy fans out there extremely happy)
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I have to fly to Montreal tomorrow, and back Tuesday night. It’ll be my first time flying off the island airport with Porter Air, so I’m looking forward to it. Actually, what I’m looking forward to is to not have to go all the way out to Pearson.
If it’s as good an experience as I’ve heard, I can see us using them for flights to New York, Montreal and even Halifax.
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We have a new picture in the dictionary next to the word “ironic”: the logo of film production company Genius Products, who are responsible for The Hottie And The Nottie. Well done, gentlemen.
[tags]helicopter, toronto, flickr song chart pool, buffy, once more with feeling, porter air, irony, geniuss products, the hottie and the nottie[/tags]
BlogTO is single-handedly trying to kill me, listing the best places to buy chocolate in Toronto. Of course, I was already aware of them, especially JS Bonbons and Soma, but those pictures are making me hungry.
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Quick thoughts on the Oscars: for the first time in quite a while I have no problem with any of the winners (or rather, with who didn’t win). Also, it’s a good thing “Falling Slowly” won best original song, ’cause if it’d lost to one of those Disney songs from Enchanted I’d have flown to L.A. and burned the Kodak theatre to the motherfucking ground.
Watch the performance (and acceptance speeches) here at Cinematical.
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I just finished reading Incendiary (indigo) and need a new book. Fortunately I own about 60 that I haven’t read yet.
[tags]blogto, chocolate, soma, js bonbons, oscars, falling slowly, once, incendiary[/tags]
Definitely the most confusing headline I’ve read all day: Dustin the Turkey plucked to represent Ireland at Eurovision. OK then.
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Today’s been a great Sunday, for one simple reason: I have done dick all. Having finished my marketing assignment yesterday, I decided today would be a rest & mental health day. I took it easy all morning and watched a movie (After The Wedding, a pretty good Danish drama) while Nellie slept, then went to have some brunch at a nearby pub. Brunch turned into a veggie burger and three beers each, and now we’re home finishing up the last little errands before Nellie starts her annual Oscar freak-out. I had a nap (this is a freakish occurrence; I never nap) on the couch before we called my niece for her birthday. I ate some ice cream. That’s as exciting as it got today.
Lazy Sunday = awesome.
[tags]dustin the turkey, eurovision, oscars, academy awards, after the wedding[/tags]
Quite an abnormal Saturday so far: Nellie was a) up before me, and b) up before 7AM. While I slept for another half hour she was off picking up breakfast & dinner from St. Lawrence Market and returning the movie we watched last night. We wanted to see Michael Clayton (imdb | rotten tomatoes) before the Oscars tomorrow night as it was only best picture nominee we hadn’t yet watched. It was very good, and shied away from convention just enough to be interesting but not weird, but I wouldn’t call it great. It wasn’t on the same scale as, say, There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men, but it’s definitely better than Atonement (which was described perfectly by Johanna Schneller in today’s Globe: “I’m not a big fan of Atonement. To me it’s like a local news anchor, handsome but hollow.”) and more typically-Oscar, so it’s hard to argue that it shouldn’t be on the list.
Still, all in all, what a list of best picture nominees. Atonement wasn’t awful by any stretch, it just didn’t wow me; in any other year it’d probably be a strong nominee. In that same Globe article when Elizabeth Renzetti lists a few recent best picture nominees — “Fatal Attraction, Working Girl, The Prince of Tides, in the name of all that’s holy” — you realize just how good a year for movies 2007 was.
[tags]michael clayton, st. lawrence market, academy awards, oscars[/tags]
Family day = movie day in the Dickinson household. We watched three today, and now my eyes hurt.
I normally don’t like animated films. I didn’t like Shrek (any of them), I was lukewarm on things like Monsters Inc or Over The Hedge, and liked Finding Nemo well enough but wouldn’t go out of my way to see it. However, Ratatouille (imdb | rotten tomatoes) had gotten such great reviews last year (a 96% on RT puts it in the upper echelon of all 1997 films) that I felt it deserved two hours of my time. I wasn’t disappointed either. It was funny without trying too hard, it was sweet without being sickly, and the animation looked incredible on Blu-ray. Even in this format it made Paris look beautiful. This isn’t a good animated film, it’s a good film full stop. I was dubious, but the critics didn’t lie on this one. Go rent it.
I’m still trying to make up my mind about We Own The Night (imdb | rotten tomatoes); was it an homage to 70s crime dramas or was it merely derivative of those same films? I’m not sure. I enjoyed the performances, but I knew what was coming long before it arrived on screen, and I deliberately try not to predict movie plots. It wasn’t a bad movie by any stretch; I just felt like I’d seen it a dozen times before.
Shifting gears completely we watched The Namesake (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at the end of our day, and it was pretty good. It felt a little jumpy to me, probably because it covered 30 years of ground, but it traded very effectively on nuanced and subtle development of relationships, to the point where you felt like you knew this characters very well by the end of the film. For a 2+ hour film where not a lot happens, it rarely if ever felt slow. So yeah, we liked it.
[tags]ratatouille, we own the night, the namesake[/tags]
It’s a cold one out there. The inner harbour is now frozen up; the S-curve you can see in the ice is cut by the Ward’s Island ferry.
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It’s been a lazy long weekend thus far. Last night we watched a movie — The Prestige (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which we both quite enjoyed — and this morning’s been all about catching up on light errands while Nellie and the boys sleep in. This afternoon I think the plan is to hit Canadian Tire, do some shopping and maybe see a movie on the way home, then watch some NBA skills competition. I have to get as much stuff done today as I can because tomorrow will be taken up by reading marketing and doing work, and Monday will be taken up by me laying on my ass and doing my damndest to clear the PVR.
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Here’s why I like the interwebs, and specifically Flickr: yesterday I got an email from someone organizing an environmental forum in Alberta, and she wanted to use a picture we took on our 2006 Rockies trip. Not sure why; it was a fairly unimpressive picture. Still, I told her to go ahead.
Today I got an email from someone who’s seen the pictures we’ve taken out our windows, some of which show a construction site just to our east. He recognized the site, and said his daughter bought a condo there. He asked if I would mind taking the occasional picture of the site so that they could see the building’s progress. I remember wishing we had someone to do that with our site, so I created a Flickr set for him and agreed to post a picture a month. Hey, it’s no skin off my back and it gives his daughter a vantage point she couldn’t possibly get otherwise, so why not?
I feel all warm and digitally fuzzy.
[tags]toronto harbour, the prestige, family day ontario, flickr, vu condominiums[/tags]
Oh, Torontians. When the media begins making fun of your hysteria, that’s when you know you should quit your whining and just buy a fucking shovel.
I’ll admit it wasn’t a lot of fun outside today — I don’t mind the snow but I’d really prefer it didn’t come at me parallel to the ground — but for the love of Frank Shuster, it’s Canada and it’s February. Take a deep breath. Buy a scarf. When we get hit by something like this, you can kvetch all you want, but until then, all you’re doing is keeping the memory of Mel Lastman’s army distress call alive in the national consciousness.
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We watched Hot Fuzz (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. It followed the style of Shaun Of The Dead closely: very, very funny at first and developing into a fairly serious homage (of, admittedly, a fairly silly subject: cop/buddy movies) by the end. If you liked SotD, I’d definitely recommend Hot Fuzz.
[tags]toronto, weather, snowfall, mel lastman, hot fuzz[/tags]
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 