Category: Movies

Like sand through the hourglass java applet…

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Damn you, JR. I have now wasted countless hours playing with sand. Curse you…and your little blog too.

.:.

Our movie-watching has dropped off so much lately I’ve downgraded our zip subscription to 2 films at a time (max 5 per month). If you ignore September in our movie-watching last year (where we saw 13 during the film festival) there’s a fairly clear downward trend in how many we watch per month. I suspect it’s all the good TV we’ve been watching that’s occupying our time. Still, 144 movies in a year is quite a bit.

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[tags]sand, movies[/tags]

"My mother told me to be wary of Fauns."

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Just got home from seeing Pan’s Labyrinth (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a film I’ve wanted to see ever since it got huge buzz at the Toronto film festival. It was, as advertised, Alice In Wonderland for adults: a child’s bizarre, sometimes grotesque visions as she copes with the horror of Spanish civil war. It was a disturbing, fantastic fairy tale; I wish I’d seen it at TIFF when I knew nothing about it.

.:.

Speaking of disturbing, we watched The Downfall (imdb | rotten tomatoes) yesterday, the story of Hitler’s last days in his Berlin bunker and of those around him, mainly from the perspective of his secretary Traudl Junge. It focused on how wildly erratic Hitler’s grasp of reality (and his tactical sense) was in those final days, as well as how his senior military members acted. Also interesting was how Eva Braun was portrayed; she was quite sympathetic, not the demoness the name tends to conjure. Anyway, we know how it all turned out — lots of cyanide pills and gunshot wounds — but it was a very interesting look at the final days of people at the whim of a madman, the only one among them not aware that the hounds are at the door.

As a side note: I wonder how tough it must be for German actors to put on as SS uniform, do a Nazi saulte and say, “Heil Hitler”. I guess they’re actors, and it’s what they’re paid to do, but man…I don’t know if I could dress up like Hermann Goering and recite lines about the superiority of the master race.

.:.

Other things we did today: got a much-needed haircut, got Nellie a 30GB Zen Vision M (pink, naturally), picked up a couple of DVDs (Brokeback Mountain & Good Night And Good Luck), tried to buy a TV (but were unsuccessful), watched the Senators demolish the Canadiens, finished updating my Shelfari collection, watched a bunch of shows on the PVR…and that’s pretty much it.

[tags]pan’s labyrinth, the downfall, hitler, traudl junge, zen vision m, shelfari[/tags]

Jesus Camp

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Two nights ago we saw Jesus Camp (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at the Bloor cinema, part of Doc Soup. Though it’s been out in the US for a while, these were (I believe) the first screenings in Canada. It was a look at how a few factions of the evangelical movement in America are indoctrinating (I honestly can’t think of a more accurate — or less loaded — word there) their children. The sight of kids & their parents speaking in tongues, convulsing with the holy spirit and praising president Bush had predictable results, given the crowd & locale, but the filmmakers did a remarkable job of staying balanced. Personally, I swung from mild amusement (natural, any time you point a camera at someone, especially kids) to laughing incredulously, to completely disgusted. The scene where the minister condemns Harry Potter, saying that warlocks would have been executed in the old testament, was absurd. The scene where the home-schooled kids (75% of home-schooled kids are evangelicals) are taught that God is the only answer that makes sense was mind-boggling. The scene where the children are given a tiny fetus figuring and made to chant, “Righteous judges! Righteous judges!” was disturbing. The scene where Ted Haggard calls a little boy “cute” was just creepy.

However, as one of the filmmakers pointed out afterward, these people have the right to teach their children whatever they like. There are reportedly tens of million evangelicals in the US, so this is hardly a fringe movement, as bizarre as it seems. The kids are doing what they feel is righteous, and the minister featured in the film is doing what she feels will help the children she works with. However far away their views may be from my own, I can’t begrudge them following a cause they believe in. What did bother me was the feeling I couldn’t shake that these kids were being a) exploited and b) deceived. The minister herself admitted that she went after the kids precisely because they’re so impressionable and easily led. And while, as I said before, parents have the legal right to deceive their children, I think it’s their moral responsibility to ensure they’re not doing so. By letting their kids be co-opted for a political cause (regardless of whether you consider evangelicals aligned with the Republican party) I felt they’d betrayed their kids.

My mother is a dedicated member of her church, even acting as a member of the presbytery in her province. She’s as committed to doing good through the church as anyone I’ve met (who isn’t ordained). And yet, I truly believe that if my mother were to watch this film she would weep.

[tags]jesus camp[/tags]

That copy of The Da Vinci Code? Not mine.

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My latest obsession: Shelfari. I’m slowly inputting my collection. The best part is how it shows you how many other people have the same books as you, and lets you browse their collections (or even chat with them) for recommendations. I told my brother about it too, and he’s got a shelf or two of his own.

Hat tip: Duarte.

.:.

I’ve finally finished watching loudQUIETloud (imdb | rotten tomatoes) after squeezing bits of it into many lunch hours. It was great to see that even bands who have as massive an impact on music as The Pixies did are made up of screwy individuals. David Lovering and his metal detector? Frank Black and his self-help tapes? Joey Santiago not recognizing his own baby? Kim Deal…full stop? Awesome, all of it; it reminded me that dorky people can be influential too.

By the way, I swear I have a different favourite Pixies song every day, depending on which one I heard last. Today it’s “Caribou”.

.:.

Google Reader has added user stats, which is piles o’ fun for a geek like me. Apparently in the last 30 days I’ve read 11,672 news items, or 389 a day. That’s probably a bit less than I’d usually do as there were a few days over the holidays when I didn’t read any, and just had to blow the items away. 400 a day sounds about right. I don’t read all of those, obviously; I skim the headlines and mark the ones I want to read.

[EDIT] That 400 doesn’t include the 300 or so I read for work each day.
[tags]shelfari, loudquietloud, pixies, google reader[/tags]

Winter my licious

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I’ve noticed a spike in the amount of junk mail arriving in my (paper) mail box over the past week or so. It seems to be mainly flyers for two things: gyms and junk food.

The eternal struggle continues.

.:.

We made our winterlicious picks today: 1055, Canoe and Savoy with T-Bone, and Jump with another friend. We start the night I get back from my stats course and end shortly before Nellie’s birthday dinner. It’ll be a fortnight of decadence, without a doubt.

.:.

This movie looks horribly inappropriate. I can’t wait to see it. Super bonus points for using a Black Keys song.

Any bets on the Oscar for best song going to “It’s Hard Out Here For A Nympho”?

[tags]junk mail, gyms, junk food, winterlicious, black snake moan[/tags]

The power of suggestion

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My wife often falls prey to “impulse” displays at checkout counters, and usually gets cravings for whatever food commercial just aired on TV (even for food she doesn’t normally like). I suppose this makes her normal; advertisers wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a market for it.

I’m not affected by ads, but music gets me every time. If I hear a good song in a movie, or see the title written somewhere, I’m on a mission to listen to that song as soon as possible. For example, in a recent Gaping Void post Hugh talked about “Sister Ray” by The Velvet Underground. Within 30 seconds I’d pulled out my Nomad, found the song and cranked up the volume.

Of course, the problem with “Sister Ray” is that I’m tired of the song by the sixth minute, and I still have eleven to go. The other problem is that “Sister Ray” reminds me of the movie Brick, which I’ll now have to go buy on DVD. Dammit.

[tags]impulse buying, gaping void, velvet underground, sister ray, brick[/tags]

"Because of this, she is not a real Seeing Eye bitch, and is also mentally deranged."

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The Onion A.V. Club sums up what’s wrong with 21st century game shows:

There’s something about Deal Or No Deal that’s more insidious than its molasses-pace and spotlit emptiness. Like 1 Vs. 100—like our culture, increasingly—it neither encourages nor rewards actual intelligence and talent. It rewards hope, self-regard, and blind persistence.

Idiocracy, here we come. Really, when you consider the success that game shows like Deal Or No Deal and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire have enjoyed recently, it’s a tribute to ABC that they’ve kept Jeopardy on the air for so long without dumbing it down.

.:.

While the story about Toronto Transit Commission chair Adam Giambrone accepting a challenge to let the public make suggestions for the TTC website revamp was in all the Toronto blogs last week, it’s finally seeped into the mainstream media. This story makes my inner geek all warm and fuzzy. Congratulations to Robert Ouellette of Reading Toronto for getting something done, and well done Adam Giambrone.

.:.

The Doha round of World Trade Organization talks may still have some life, though the clock (on President Bush’s “fast-track” authority, specifically) is ticking. Ultimately, this is a case where a lame-duck president could come in handy; if Bush were facing re-election in 2008 there’s absolutely no chance he’d cut $20 billion in farm subsidies.

.:.

The Canadiens are now mired in what can only be called a slump. They’ve lost 3 straight, partly because of the flu bug that’s floored half the team, and partly because New Jersey just has their number. The Habs need to locate their scoring touch, and soon, because the Senators and the Rangers are turning on the jets.

.:.

Last night we watched Everything Is Illuminated (imdb | rotten tomatoes), the movie adaptation of a book I read a few years back. I wondered how director Liev Schreiber would deal with the third, most fantastical storyline; it turns out he ignored it altogether. It was the right choice, if also the boring one; there was no good way to put that on the screen and still hold the other storyline(s) together, and yet that storyline was the only thing that made the book stand out from the rest of the story which had been told hundreds of times before. What remained in the film was good, but not new.
[tags]deal or no deal, 1 vs 100, who wants to be a millionaire, jeopardy, ttc, adam giambrone, robert ouellette, wto, doha round, canadiens, everything is illuminated[/tags]

"That's called a hangover, Amigo."

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Busy day yesterday. We went downtown to see a movie, heading first to Cora’s for brunch, but the lineup was halfway to Hamilton so we settled for Milestone’s instead. While I normally despise that place, there were no Bellini-sucking wankers at 11 AM. Anyway, it served it’s purpose: fast, and close to the theatre.

We were there to see Children Of Men (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at the Paramount. It was as good as the 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes suggests: interesting, compelling, action-packed, terrifying, cautionary, visually stunning, well-acted, and a little too familiar to feel entirely like fiction. Highly, highly recommended. When I re-do my best-of-2006 list in a month or so Children Of Men will be on it.

.:.

Last night CBGB has us over for what they called the veggie fiesta. Basically, they cooked us an amazing meal: we started with the smoked cheddar and Roquefort cheese we brought along from Pusateri’s (as well as some Prosecco), then had asparagus wrapped in a phyllo pastry, followed by a salad with green mango & chilies (with a very nice white), a red curry for the main (with Nellie’s favourite: a Tedeschi Amarone) and an amazing strawberry/rhubarb pie topped with ice cream (with dessert wine). It was a better meal than I’ve had in a lot of restaurants. If I keep eating like that I’ll forget that I ever ate meat.

.:.

OK…have to go shake Nellie out of bed and get ready for the Raptors game this afternoon.
[tags]cora’s, milestone’s, children of men, pusateri’s, strawberry rhubarb pie[/tags]

Where The Truth Lies

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We watched Where The Truth Lies (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night, last year’s TIFF entry by Atom Egoyan. It was good, but I wouldn’t call it great. Overall the acting was good (though Alison Lohman seems to have studied at the Keanu Reeves School of Facial Expression Diversity), but that wasn’t enough. When the primary actor has to spend an entire scene explaining to the camera what happened rather than just showing it to us, I feel less like I’ve watched a film than a university lecture.

[tags]where the truth lies[/tags]