Category: Movies

"I can't think of one reason big enough for him to lie about that's small enough to matter."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

We went to see Gone, Baby, Gone (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. It was really good. I would’ve been surprised by how good it was if I hadn’t heard all the great reviews first. I’d add my voice to the choir of people saying Ben Affleck makes a better director than actor, and his brother’s turning some heads as well. I’m always been a fan of Casey Affleck, but with lead roles in this movie and The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, and indie cred from films like Gerry and Lonesome Jim, I think he’s one good role away from becoming very big.

.:.

Drowning people will often flail their arms wildly in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. Just ask SOCAN.

.:.

Not that I’m complaining, but the Toronto weather’s been crazy warm for late October. We went for a walk today and it felt like a spring stroll. Sunny and 17 degrees…it’s supposed to be 22, 23 and 18 for the next three days. Guess I’d better enjoy it while I can…apres (ce) mois, le deluge.

[tags]gone baby gone, ben affleck, casey affleck, socan, music download tariff, toronto weather[/tags]

Sonny, je t'aime…even if you do wake me up in the middle of the &%@# night

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’m much too tired to function. My cat woke me up twice last night because he wanted to play. It’s a long story. He’s a very demanding cat. Anyway, I wasn’t functioning well enough to run today but the plan’s on for tomorrow. Just to be on the safe side I may build myself one of those Hannibal Lecter carts that fits an 18-pound wookiee.

.:.

We haven’t been to a theatre in months, and it shows. The movies are piling up again. The following movies are in the theatre right now:

  • Into The Wild
  • King Of California
  • Michael Clayton
  • Paris, Je T’aime
  • The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
  • The Brave One
  • The Darjeeling Limited
  • The Kingdom
  • We Own The Night

And then there’re these, which come out in the next two weeks:

  • Gone, Baby, Gone
  • Rendition
  • Reservation Road
  • Dan In Real Life
  • Control
  • Fugitive Pieces
  • Rails & Ties
  • Run, Fat Boy, Run

I especially want to see Paris, Je T’aime now that we’ve been to…well, Paris.

[tags]into the wild, king of california, michael clayton, paris je t’aime, the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford, the brave one, the darjeeling limited, the kingdom, we own the night, gone baby gone, rendition, reservation road, dan in real life, control, fugitive pieces, rails & ties, run fat boy run[/tags]

"A misanthrope is a bugger who hates every other bugger."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Oh dear.

  • Original weight: 233
  • Weight last week: 222
  • Weight this week: 223

Not so good. All that talk last weekend of exercising and healthier eating devolved into working long hours and going out for drinks every night. Today I ran three miles as a sort of penance. Shame is a great motivator; ever wonder why I blog about how fat I am?

.:.

For the last couple of months, after I’d complained for the umpteenth time about UpCountry not delivering our bed, I started to get hits on my blog from people querying “upcountry bankrupt” and the like. I guess that was early warning; yesterday The Toronto Star reported that UpCountry has declared BankRuptcy. Glad we finally got our bed when we did; I guess our problems may have been less about their stellar incompetence than about their desperate attempts to remain solvent.

.:.

We spent the afternoon watching a couple of movies:

  • The Proposition (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was violent and dark and moody and beautiful and jarring. Written by Nick Cave and starring some awesome talent (Ray Winstone, Guy Pearce, Danny Huston, Emily Watson, John Hurt), it was as artful as it was bloody. Reminiscent of the final scenes of Unforgiven.
  • Still on the dark side, Half Nelson (imdb | rotten tomatoes) is all Ryan Gosling, carrying a movie about a drug-addicted junior high teacher on his back. There were other good performances as well, but Gosling just owned this one, and it was a tough one to handle. He seemed just desperate enough to make it painful, and just caring enough to make it tragic.

Nellie’s now watching Mallrats just to shake off all the downer.

[tags]fatblogging, upcountry, the proposition, half nelson[/tags]

Maybe Howard Hughes rides the rocket?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

It’s warm outside. Crazy warm. July warm. Thanksgiving is supposed to be the start of sweater weather, but we’ve actually got the fan running right now. 32 degrees? That’s nutty.

.:.

I forgot to mention: yesterday, on our way to meet CBGB for breakfast before the ladies went shopping, Nellie and I saw a water bottle rolling around the floor of the subway. Except it wasn’t filled with water anymore. It was filled with something yellow. I double-checked the label (from a distance, naturally) and it wasn’t apple juice or ginger ale or anything else. The water had been replaced by…well, I guess someone just couldn’t hold it.

.:.

Today’s been a day of high-caliber relaxation. We slept until 10, and have spent the entire day catching up on our TV backlog. THE ENTIRE DAY. Oh, and I may have been too harsh in my indictment of the new TV shows…Dirty Sexy Money isn’t bad, and Life is actually pretty good so far. Anyway, today’s one of those great vacation days…no school, no work, no planning, no errands, no stress…just chilling and regeneration.

.:.

Yesterday — which wasn’t exactly stressful either — we watched Shut Up And Sing (imdb | rotten tomatoes), the documentary about the Dixie Chicks following Natalie Maines’ dig at President Bush just as the Iraq war kicked off. It was, as advertised, very good. There wasn’t much new information (to me, anyway) and the uproar wasn’t quite as intense as I had thought — or it wasn’t portrayed that way, at least — but there was lots of interesting subject matter: details of the backlash, their disgust with the country music establishment, and the recording of their most recent album. Bonus: Rich Rubin and his dreadlocked dog make an appearance! Oh, and Natalie Maines is my girlfriend du jour.

[tags]toronto weather, pee in a bottle, dirty sexy money, life, dixie chicks, shut up and sing, girlfriend du jour[/tags]

"I'm with the band!"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’ve uploaded some of my favourite France pictures to Flickr. Here’s the slideshow. Nellie deserves all the credit; I have no eye for photography.

I also uploaded a video to YouTube. I’d had a bit to drink and decided it was a good idea to sit down at the drums for the first time in fifteen years. The guitarist was nice enough to humour me with a bass track, but I still sound quite rubbish. The shrieking you hear on the video is Nellie, who’d never seen or heard me play the drums. I sold my kit for tuition money the summer I met her.

.:.

I passed my most recent course. The marks went up today and I actually did a little better than I expected. I’m usually crap at multiple choice exams but I did ok this time around, and my other marks were good enough. Whew.

Three to go.

.:.

We chilled this afternoon by watching a light little film, Imagine Me & You (imdb | rotten tomatoes). The first half of the movie was so cute it hurt my teeth; the second half turned into a rather standard romantic comedy, but it was still kind of goofy and charming. Stunning female leads and a sapphic storyline didn’t hurt either.

.:.

Newsy bits:

  • December’s Spice Girls show in London sold out in 38 seconds, proving once and for all that drunk women with poor taste are quite adept at clicking a mouse.
  • John McCain has gone from embarrassing to…well, more embarrassing.
  • Did you miss out on the auction for Mogwai drummer Martin Bulloch’s old pacemaker? Well, fear not; you have another chance. Marty seems to replace these a lot. Next time he should get one with an audible beep; he’d never need another metronome or click track. Most Mogwai songs are around 80 bpm anyway…
  • Radiohead’s latest album pricing — where they let fans decide how much they’ll pay to download it — has gotten the attention of The Economist. George’s worlds are colliding!!

[tags]france, imagine me and you, spice girls, john mccain, mogwai, martin bulloch, pacemaker, radiohead, the economist[/tags]

Les vacances sont fini

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

My parents have flown back to Nova Scotia, so the vacation is now officially over. We’ve set about recovering from the time away and resuming our daily lives. We both have tomorrow off and plan to relax a little, but soon it’ll be time for the office and the gym and groceries and bills and blah blah blah.

We had one last farewell to the festivities last night, having dinner at Fieramosca with my parents and my aunt and uncle from Guelph. Now every member of my immediate family, and Nellie’s, has been there with us at least once. It was, as always, a terrific evening and a good way to cap things off.

Actually, getting my parents to the airport on time was a bit of an adventure. We booked a car from Autoshare to drive them and Nellie went across the street to pick it up. After fifteen minutes she still hadn’t shown up (the car is parked right across the street) so we were all puzzled. Ten minutes after that I was starting to get a little worried, but five minutes later she appeared. See, the downtown core was slammed today: Nuit Blanche has shut down some streets and both the Toronto waterfront marathon and the Run for the Cure were on today. This meant road not only closures, but also that thousands of people who’d just finished running were trying to drive out of the city…and we were already thirty minutes behind our (conservative, admittedly) schedule. Calling a cab would’ve taken too long so we drove anyway; after crawling along Queen Street we thought we were home free on University…until we saw that Word on the Street was blocking the entirety of Queen’s Park. Apparently it’s festival weekend in Toronto. Anyway, after a slight diversion around WotS we booted up Avenue and cruised to the airport, arriving in plenty of time for their flight. We think.

.:.

I saw some really great places on our trip — highlights include the view from Domme, walking around the old centre of Sarlat, the rooms at the Relais Franc Mayne and pretty much all of Paris — but the five days spent at the chateau with so many friends and family, in such a phenomenal location, for such an auspicious occasion, is really what I’ll remember about the trip. It was just one great memory piled on top of the next. As I said before, it was a once-in-a-lifetime happening. I can’t believe it’s only been a week since we left. Already I miss it terribly.

.:.

One more good thing about France:

  • Original weight: 233
  • Weight last week: 227
  • Weight this week: 221.5

Yup…I actually lost weight, despite a steady infusion of pain au chocolate and booze. I may have lost even more than those 5.5 pounds but put a bit back on once I arrived in Toronto.

Clearly I need to spend more time in France.

.:.

Given how many times I’ve watched these two movies, I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before now:

“The (toy) bear that Jack Ryan brings home to his daughter at the end of The Hunt for Red October is the exact same bear that Bruce Willis brings to his son in Die Hard (both films were directed by John McTiernan).”

[via John Sakamoto]

[tags]fieramosca, autoshare, nuit blanche, toronto waterfront marathon, run for the cure, word on the street, relais franc mayne, domme, sarlat, die hard, hunt for red october[/tags]

The fake empire

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

.:.

Met up with T-Bone today for lunch at Volo before our movie. Our screening was at the Ryerson theatre at 3:00, and we figured if we left around 2:10 we’d get in line with lots of time to spare, so we met at 1:00. Lots of time, right? Not so much. Just like the last time I was there they were short-staffed, and 45 minutes after ordering our food still hadn’t arrived. It showed up a few minutes after 2:00…but they brought me the wrong dish. Fortunately it only had salmon in it (and it wasn’t half bad) but T-Bone’s food wasn’t great. They knocked the price of my meal off the bill and forgot to charge me for my first drink, but I didn’t feel too bad about it. We wouldn’t have had time to correct it anyway. As it was we had to scarf down food and drink, and got to the Ryerson just in time to join the end of the line entering the theatre. Too bad; T-Bone’s first experience at Volo wasn’t a very good one, and it’s gone from being one of my favourite places to being a little sketchy.

The movie we saw, however, pretty much made up for it. I was kind of worried about Battle In Seattle (imdb | rotten tomatoes)…the title seemed corny (it was later explained in the film), it was a director’s debut film, I’m not typically a big fan of either Charlize Theron or Woody Harrelson…I’d kind of set it up in my mind to be rather bad. However, it turned out to be the great film festival movie. Not a great film…a great film festival movie. I’ll explain.

This was, according to Noah Cowan, the world premiere of the film. As such the director Stuart Townsend was there, as were some of the actors: Woody Harrelson, Martin Henderson, Michelle Rodriguez, Andre Benjamin and Charlize Theron, Townsend’s girlfriend. This is one of those experiences you have at the festival that you don’t get when watching a movie normally, when a director is living or dying with his cast and crew, surrounded by hundreds of movie fans. You get to see a visceral, engaged audience react to a film, and you get to see the director absorb that reaction. For Townsend today, it was quite a reaction indeed.

The film was about the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and the violent confrontations that resulted…dramatic and emotional subject matter, to be sure, and particularly interesting to me as the issue of WTO patent regulation was the topic of my big paper last year. At the end of the film, as The National sang “Fake Empire”, the crowd stood, turned to Townsend and applauded. They stood and clapped for five minutes as he waved, thanked the crowd and hugged a weeping Theron. That, that moment is what you get at a film festival and nowhere else…seeing a man who has worked for five years to perfect a vision, and is witnessing for the first time the realization of that vision. It was pretty moving; not quite like seeing Hotel Rwanda a few years ago, but emotional nonetheless.

I’ll be interested to see how the film is received outside of that situation. Was it a great film, technically speaking? Not really. But for two hours this afternoon, it was a classic.

[tags]brian mulroney, volo, battle in seattle, stuart townsend[/tags]

I can't believe it's already half over

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

We just got home from our first (and, in Nellie’s case, only) festival film. Since we’re only seeing two this year there wasn’t a lot of room for error, and I felt some pressure on tonight’s pick. Fortunately we lucked out. Starting Out In The Evening (imdb) was a great film.

It was fitting that we sat in the same theatre as last year’s opening night (when we saw Requiem: my review), another pleasant surprise. It was even a surprise in the same mould…a story told with no effects, no devices or gimmicks, just sharp writing and superb acting. The director described star Frank Langella as a giant. You’d need no further proof of that than to watch this film.

[tags]starting out in the evening, tiff, tiff07[/tags]

There will be no rocket science

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This is all the detail my brain can muster today:

  • The Matador (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was ok, but not great.
  • I think it’s time for The Ex (the Canadian National Exhibition, for those of you not living in Toronto) to just close up shop. It’s looking it’s age.
  • If you know use an RSS reader and you have some basic technical skill, you should really check out Yahoo Pipes. I’ve been playing around with it since it came out, but now I’m finding it useful and not just kind of cool. For example, I aggregated all my various Montreal Canadiens news sites into one feed, and I found a patched Pitchfork feed so that I don’t keep seeing the same stories over and over.
  • I hope the film festival puts more tickets on sale. The few that I have a chance to see and that look interesting are already sold out after the advanced draw.

[tags]the matador, the ex, cne, yahoo pipes, tiff07[/tags]

I am constant as the northern star

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Fatblogging, ho:

  • Original weight: 233
  • Weight last week: 224.5
  • Weight this week: 223.5

Another week, another pound. At this rate I should be 67.5 pounds in just three years.

.:.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was messy, intricate and very funny. It’s a film about a film about an essentially unfilmable novel, and I think I may have missed one or more “a film about…”s. Michael Winterbottom is quickly becoming one of my favourite directors.

.:.

There’s an excellent piece in Esquire this month entitled “God’s Not Watching Baghdad” that you should read if you have 15 minutes.

I was back in Iraq to see the president’s surge, to see if pushing more troops into Baghdad had made a difference. I had last been in Iraq two years before as a sergeant in an infantry company, patrolling its farm fields and city streets. On a good day, the country looks the same as it did during my deployments. Usually it looks much worse. Being back in Iraq, I hoped, would be a brief sojourn to reality, a break from America’s version of the war, where the battle lines had been drawn by fearless sloganeers: “Cut ‘n’ Run” or “Bring ‘Em Home,” depending. Where the debate no longer has much to do with Iraq and its people — other than the shitty smorgasbord of daily violence touted as evidence of either the mission’s futility or the dangers of quitting. Mostly, I wanted to make sense of why this had gone on so long with so little progress and see how the war looked to those tasked with the salvage operation.

Read the full article.

.:.

An article popped up in my feeds this week that resonated on a couple of levels. The Coast, the Halifax alternative weekly paper I used to read all the time in university, recently ripped off Passive-Aggressive Notes, a blog I quite enjoy. P.A.N. reposted the article, including this picture, which made me laugh my ass off. Ha ha ha ha. Soyfucker.

It also reminded me of an east-coast delicacy: donair pizza. I never liked donairs themselves (that sauce always made me sick) and I couldn’t eat the pizzas, but I used to loooooove eating the donair meat. I don’t even know what kind of meat it was (ostensibly I think it was meant to be lamb) but I still crave it every time I’m in Halifax.

.:.

Finally, after my brain being rendered mush by work and school for many months, it has sunk in: I’m going on vacation in two weeks. My thought priorities now seem to be as follows:

  1. Vacation
  2. The film festival, even though I’m missing it this year
  3. Work
  4. Scarlett Johansson
  5. Rehabbing my wrist
  6. Losing weight
  7. Keeping my fingernails tidy and well-clipped
  8. School

[tags]fatblogging, tristram shandy, the coast, passive aggressive notes, donair, france, scarlett johansson[/tags]