Category: Movies

In which I geek right out

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  • That’s a pretty kickass-lookin’ Iron Man.
  • Jenna Fischer wants to do more nudity in her films. Well, if that’s what she feels she has to do for her craft, I guess we’ll all just have to support her.
  • Ray Park, the who portrayed Darth Maul (probably the only good thing about Star Wars: Episode I) will now get to play Snake Eyes in the upcoming G.I. Joe movie. That’s two iconically cool characters in one lifetime, Ray. Give thanks.

.:.

May not blog for a couple of days. Conference. Talk amongst yourselves.

[tags]iron man, jenna fischer, ray park, darth maul, snake eyes, g.i. joe[/tags]

UnZipped

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Here I thought taking some time away from the MBA would be nice and relaxing, but with work being what it is and with Christmas just around the corner, it’s still loopy. Still, anything’s better than reading about the effect of tax shields on corporate financing decisions.

.:.

Do you love yourself? Do you love good music?

If you answered yes to both of those, then ask yourself this: have you listened to Spoon‘s Kill The Moonlight? If you haven’t, then you were probably mistaken about the first two questions. Really, it’s one of the best collections of music I’ve ever heard. If you haven’t heard it, I can’t really give you a good reference point for comparison, even if you’ve heard other Spoon albums. Just do yourself a favour: go download it. At first you’ll only like one or two songs, but soon they’ll all grow on you.

.:.

I have signed up for The Movie Network and am planning to cancel my Zip account. It’s just not cost effective; I’m paying $15/month and not watching any movies. TMN, on the other hand, gives me a lot more immediate variety (as opposed to variety that I have to order) and access to TV shows that we want to see in real-time like The Wire and Dexter. Some day — like when the MBA is finished — we may go back to Zip, but for now it’s going bye-bye.

[tags]spoon, kill the moonlight, tmn, zip.ca, the wire, dexter[/tags]

Maybe I should invite a personal trainer over next

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Nothing like hosting a few social gatherings to put our asses in gear. After painting last weekend we spent this weekend acquiring new lighting and hanging pictures. It’s actually starting to look like someone lives here.

.:.

Yesterday, when I called No Country For Old Men one of the best movies I’ve seen all year, it got me thinking…what other 2007 films did I see that were good? It’s hard to think back to January…fortunately I keep my feathers numbered a database for just such an emergency.

The five best I’ve seen this year would probably be The Bourne Ultimatum, Gone Baby Gone, Superbad, Zodiac and, of course, No Country For Old Men. I saw others that were pretty good, but those are the ones I’d consider really good films. I was about to say that it seems like a pretty light year, but I guess I haven’t seen any of The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Control, The Darjeeling Limited, Eastern Promises, Inland Empire, Into The Wild, Iraq In Fragments, The Kingdom, Lars And The Real Girl, The Lookout, Michael Clayton, Once, Sicko, This Is England or We Own The Night yet. So I’ll get back to you.

[tags]condo decorating, no country for old men, best films of 2007, bourne ultimatum, gone baby gone, superbad, zodiac[/tags]

"It's been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it's here."

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The sun was almost piercing this morning when it first came up. Came right through the blind at me.

.:.

Last night Nellie and I went to see No Country For Old Men (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at the Varsity. My god, what a movie. Probably the best I’ve seen all year. The writing — adapted very closely from the novel, I’m told by a co-worker who read it — was incredible. It was tense and engaging and funny in that Coen Brothers way.

It was also brutal. Very, very brutal; if you’re the kind of person who’s uneasy about film violence, you might choose to avoid it, but man…the characters and scenes evoked by this film are just unforgettable. I’m fairly certain my next nightmare will feature Javier Bardem in a pageboy haircut. If you can take the violence* and you generally appreciate Coen Brothers films then I can’t recommend the movie enough.

Ooh…before the film started we saw the trailer for There Will Be Blood, the new Paul Thomas Anderson film starring Daniel Day-Lewis. While it’s not a horror film, the preview could best be described as chilling.

* Comparing it to other films, I’d say it’s more violent than The Departed; maybe more like A History Of Violence.

.:.

We bought a laser level / stud finder this morning. I figure this makes me about 3% more domestic than I was yesterday.

[tags]toronto sunrise, no country for old men, there will be blood, javier bardem, coen brothers, laser level stud finder[/tags]

Ten-year-olds and shut-ins.

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On the plus side, we had the day off today. On the other hand, it was an ugly day outside, so we didn’t venture beyond our doorstep much…just shut it down and conserved our energy for the week ahead. We did manage to put up a few pictures, and we just watched a movie: Hollywoodland (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Meh. Not bad, but I’ll forget it by tomorrow.

.:.

I’ll do the Toronto Star one better: it’s time to retire the national embarrassment that is Don Cherry. He is far from an impartial analyst (he openly cheers for the Leafs, “good Canadian boys” and anyone who doesn’t wear a visor), and his opinion is stuck in the goonish 1970s/80s.

“If the instigator rule wasn’t in you could get this guy and wipe him out,” Cherry thundered, apparently not sated by the first-period fisticuffs. “This is what’s bad about hockey when you have a little guy yapping around and you can’t do anything about it.”

Indeed. Retire him, CBC. There’re plenty of cavemen on TV to go around.

.:.

Oxford American magazine has a great article about the nature of indie music. It intersperses the history of a 2006 buzz band with a description of the tastemaking machine that turns out these hot new things with dizzying speed. It talks about the fever that infects these tastemakers, where the discovery of something new becomes more important than the music itself:

“But the second time,” he went on, “well, now it sold out early, and it’s at a bigger club. And I’m not that guy anymore. I’m not the guy discovering them. I’m just a guy who is with everybody else who also knows who they are.”

The article mentions how Pitchfork likens a band to, among others, Animal Collective. I thought for a long time that I just didn’t get this band, but I think now I do. I still don’t like them; I think I’m just on to the scam. I ranted on my friend Joe’s blog about them a while ago; rather than repeat myself I’ll just paste here what I wrote there:

Animal Collective is one of those bands that indie hipster nerds (by which I mean those people who want the label more than they want to listen to the music) profess to love because they know the band will never be mainstream and no one will, as a consequence, question their indie cred for having once liked a mainstream band. Nobody actually *likes* their music. It’s like a secret indie handshake. “Hey, you like Animal Collective? Yeah? Cool, we can hang out then.”

It’s like film students who claim to love Un Chien Andalou…no they don’t. But no one else ever will either, so they keep it for themselves so they can have their little club.

Indie became a scene not because it was a genre of music but because it wasn’t popular and mainstream. Now that indie music is just as mass-produced and marketed as any other genre, the indie hipster nerds who crave exclusivity more than they crave good music have made the pursuit of the next great secret thing more important than the discovery of a life-changing album. It’s to be expected; whenever there’s a little money or prestige to be had, there’s little that can stop people from trying to be the king.

[tags]hollywoodland, don cherry, oxford american, indie music, animal collective, indie music[/tags]

"Most people I've meet hardly seem like human beings to me anymore."

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A Remembrance Day parade just down Church street this afternoon.

.:.

It was a busy days, internets. We were up early, at Home Depot by 8:15 this morning, and back home painting by 9:00. Well…I wasn’t painting, but Nellie and GB were. I provided logistical support (fetching breakfast, moving furniture, etc.) as I am teh suck when it comes to painting. However, those two were very fast; they did two coats on the living room walls and one and a half coats (don’t ask) in the bedroom. The living room is now a very awesome gray. It looks great, and it feels great to have some color on the walls. Tomorrow we plan to actually put some art on the walls! Like we actually live here!

Tonight we relaxed (Nellie’s actually ready to pass out any minute now), ordered some Thai from the new place across the street (which was very good) and watched one of the movies we PVR’d during TMN‘s free preview weekend: Down In The Valley (imdb | rotten tomatoes). It was…weird. The first half is a standard fish out of water, girl falls for the weird loner, pseudo love story. The second half is a western/chase movie set in the San Fernando valley. Like I said…weird. I wouldn’t recommend it.

We started to watch two other movies from the free preview: Strangers With Candy (which we stopped watching after half an hour…maybe I missed something by never seeing the show but I just didn’t find it that funny) and Aeon Flux (I didn’t even want to record it, but Nellie likes dumb action movies sometimes. I couldn’t even watch it.). We also recorded Volver and Hollywoodland.

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This book review in The New Republic makes my brain swim. It’s about Jack Goldsmith’s book detailing his time as assistant attorney general in the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel. The review covers the book itself, but also gives the reader a synopsis of what it must have been like for Goldsmith and others like him, given the unilateral way in which the Bush administration has operated.

Within a matter of days, Goldsmith learned that he was expected to kowtow to the White House’s legal demands…Battle after battle took place, with Goldsmith saying that the president was not at liberty to do this or that and the White House disagreeing. At one point Addington warned Goldsmith that “if you rule that way, the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands.” All of this made Goldsmith, an honest and learned man who did not like to see the Constitution traduced by ideology or power, more than despondent, and eventually he left the Department of Justice.

Frightening, since this office is set up to provide counsel to an executive branch struggling with some immense legal issues. It wasn’t long-lived though:

But alas, much of Goldsmith’s handiwork would soon be undone. After his departure, his more pliant successor, Steven Bradbury, gave the administration what it wanted. According to a recent New York Times story that could easily serve as an epilogue to Goldsmith’s book, the administration put Bradbury on a probationary period as acting head of OLC, refusing formally to nominate him until they had seen how he would rule in his acting capacity on a variety of issues.

The full review isn’t that long, and is well worth reading. I assume the book is too, if you want to understand what it feels like for a principled, rational man (who is no left wing lawyer, by the way) to find himself surrounded by ideologues.

[tags]remembrance day, home depot, painting, down in the valley, strangers with candy, aeon flux, jack goldsmith, new republic[/tags]

I had no idea "religiosity" was even a word

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Richard Florida, author of Rise of the Creative Class, professor and all-around smart guy, is living in Toronto now. His blog is mirrored on the Globe and Mail’s website, and given his local focus I’ve subscribed to the feed. I find most of what he posts about very interesting; he describes his specialty areas as “economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural and technological innovation” so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Over the weekend he posted a graph that he’d found on Andrew Sullivan’s site, who found it in a Pew Research paper. I’ve posted it here:

Wealth and religion

While it doesn’t surprise me, it does illustrate the data nicely. Put simply, it indicates that the more religious a country, the less wealthy it tends to be. You could argue about which is the chicken and which is the egg in that correlation, but the trend is there. Canada’s easy to spot; the two North American countries are represented in navy blue and the US is labeled. Canada’s practically on top of the trend line.

Actually, the US is one of the two very interesting outliers: it’s the most wealthy nation, but is way off the trend line. Kuwait is the other: more wealthy than most of its middle eastern neighbours, but near the very top of the religion axis. Of course, that aberration can be explained by the fluke presence of oil; the US is a more complicated riddle.

Lots of other fascinating data in that report; give it a read if you have a chance.

.:.

More interesting articles that showed up in my feeds today:

[tags]richard florida, pew research, toronto pollution, wes anderson, malcolm gladwell[/tags]

"This is my first torture."

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The weekend of awesomeness continued today. We both slept in a little before going for breakfast at Fran’s and picking up groceries on the way home. We dropped the bags and walked over to the Scotiabank theatre to see Rendition (imdb | rotten tomatoes). It was ok…a little heavy-handed and too scattered to really flesh out most of the characters, but worth watching. Weird part was the couple in front of us. They alternated between fooling around and taking phone calls. It was distracting and, frankly, confusing. And the dude had Sideshow Bob hair. Anyhoo.

After the movie we decided to stop at Smokeless Joe’s for a couple of beer (Great Lakes Pumpkin Spice Ale for Nellie, Hacker-Pschorr Dunkel Weiss for me) and a late lunch. We got there at 3:40 and the place was empty. I mean, literally empty…even the staff was nowhere to be seen. Finally a guy showed up; turns out they don’t open until 4, but he let us stay. When we left 90 minutes later only one other customer had come in, so it was like we had the bar to ourselves all afternoon. Fun.

.:.

Late last night we finally watched The Last King Of Scotland (imdb | rotten tomatoes), and I’ll say the same thing every other critic and person I know has said: pretty good movie, but Forest Whitaker was amazing. Pretty decent performances all around, and a good job recreating the Uganda of the time, and Kerry Washington is my girlfriend du jour, but really, it’s Whitaker who steals the show. As usual. Looking at the man’s imdb profile it’s almost hard to believe he hadn’t won many awards until this film. He should have won an Emmy just for his role on The Shield two seasons ago.

.:.

Christopher Hume, the Toronto Star’s architecture critic, wrote up our building yesterday. He gave it an A, which is nice to hear.

Sitting on the northwest corner of Church and Adelaide Sts., this is one of the most elegant condo towers in Toronto. It isn’t fancy and the materials – glass and steel – aren’t expensive; what makes this building attractive is the elegance and simplicity of its form. At 45 storeys , it’s one of those rare structures designed to take advantage of height, indeed, height is what makes it so appealing.

Up close, there’s just enough detailing to maintain a sense of engagement. Glass Juliet balconies, perforated banding, operable windows and other touches enliven surfaces that could otherwise be sterile and boring. Just as important, the utilitarian functions have been hidden away from the main facades on Church, Adelaide and Lombard. Keeping in mind that the original proposed site was the park surrounding St. James’ Cathedral (which would have been disastrous), the final location across the road and slightly north is perfect; a rare happy ending.

The design and integration to the neighbourhood were almost as important to us as the unit itself. We’re glad it turned out so well.

.:.

  • Original weight: 233
  • Weight last week: 222
  • Weight this week: 221.5

I did get to the gym three times this week and did lots of walkin’ around the city this weekend; I believe what kept me to a scant half pound dropped was the steady influx of Hallowe’en candy to the office

[tags]rendition, smokeless joe’s, last king of scotland, forest whitaker, girlfriend du jour, spire condominium, christopher hume, toronto star, fatblogging[/tags]

Dan Dickinson's Day Off

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Yes, just like Ferris Bueller, except I wasn’t pursued around the city by a sex offender.

Around 2:00 yesterday afternoon I got the best news I could possibly have received: my class got an extension on our assignment. I had my weekend back! Oh, frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!

After plowing through a bunch of work and a last-minute crisis (deftly handled by T-Bone and, in a supporting role, myself) I arrived half an hour late to meet Nellie and CBGB at beerbistro. A glass of Stiegl Pils and some frites later I put the Blackberry away and settled into the weekend. I had butternut squash ravioli with sliced plums (delicious!) paired with a Brooklyn Brown Ale (ditto!) and a piece of chocolate swirl cheesecake for dessert. We all called it an early night after that; it was a long-ass day and we had plans for the early morning.

Today’s been both productive and relaxing; it’s like found time for me, so I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. We got up early and hit St. Lawrence Market for some pastries, seafood, tofu and vegetables, then grabbed ingredients for dinner at the Dominion on the way home. We sucked back the pastries while we watched Friday Night Lights and The Office on the PVR. Next leg of the trip was to walk up to Henry’s and collect some prints we’d ordered online. We’re planning to put some of our pictures on our walls, so we got some B&W prints from recent trips.

After dropping those back at home we struck out for MEC to buy me a jacket, stopping at Chapters on the way back and then grabbing lunch (all-day breakfast, in truth) at
Over Easy. On the way home we bought some picture frames for some of the afore-mentioned pictures and picked up dry cleaning. Back out we went to the {shudder} Eaton Centre, grabbing some more picture frames and a very nifty little charging station at Pottery Barn before escaping the mall as rapidly as possible. One last stop at The Bay for towels and our credit cards were begging for mercy.

Home again we gave the place a much-needed clean and then turned to neglected email accounts and feed readers. Tonight we’re laying low, enjoying the pardon (ok, reprieve) and looking forward to tomorrow.

.:.

Good luck, Atlantic Canada. Hold on tight.

[tags]ferris bueller, beerbistro, st. lawrence market, friday night lights, the office, over easy, eaton centre, pottery barn, hurricane noel[/tags]

"Jesus Harold Christ on rubber crutches, Bobby!"

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Once I finished my paper yesterday I actually had a little free time. Wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. We ended up watching Zodiac (imdb | rotten tomatoes). I really liked it; I have a thing for David Fincher films anyway, but this was really good work. Gripping, creepy, detailed, even funny in parts, and always interesting, despite the 2.5 hour running time. It was amazing how much like the 1960s/70s he made it feel. Highly recommended.

.:.

So, it looks like our condo repairs are very nearly done. Today they came in (without telling us) to repair the kitchen floor damaged in the toilet-flooding back in May, so they just have to fix the baseboards they tore up today. Still one or two things left like improperly mounted blinds — but at least we finally have our blinds — but they finally seem to be fixing everything. And all it took was pressure from Tarion: we followed the conciliation process because the condo hadn’t fixed most of the stuff on our 30-day list, which they seemed surprised by. I don’t know if I buy their excuses (“We thought all the problems in your unit had been addressed”; “We sent you a letter to confirm…didn’t you get it?”) but the alternative is that they vindictively blacklisted us because of how embarrassed they were by the gas leak fiasco. Hopefully it’s the former; I prefer to think that people aren’t that sinister.

.:.

Here’s an op-ed piece from Mogwai‘s Stuart Braithwaite on Radiohead‘s new business model. Especially delightful are the shots he takes at Madonna near the end.

“The braveness of [Radiohead’s] move was juxtaposed perfectly with the fact that last week Madonna signed her new record deal with Live Nation aka Clear Channel aka the bastards that got George W Bush elected. But since she speaks with a fake upper class English accent and kills animals for fun they frankly deserve each other.”

[tags]zodiac, david fincher, condo repairs, mogwai, radiohead, madonna[/tags]