Category: Movies

Holy crapinaw!

Dan Dickinson

After years and years and years of waiting, Nellie’s wishes have finally been answered. Season one of The Young Riders has been released on DVD. I’m not kidding. She was squealing with joy as she opened the packaging.

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I’m watching the Leafs and Canadiens play on TSN. Even though the game’s in Montreal and TSN’s usually a fairly impartial network, it’s like watching the game in a Toronto bar ’cause Joe Bowen and Harry Neale are calling it.

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Just ordered our festival pass for Hot Docs. By the time I get back from my course next wek the lineup should be announced. I love Hot Docs; dollar for dollar it’s the best festival value in the city.

Hey Mr. Clean…you're dirty now too.

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I watched two movies this weekend (somehow, in between all the basketball), both centered around music:

Lightning In A Bottle (imdb | rotten tomatoes) is a must-see if you like the blues. Antoine Fuqua filmed a pile of blues artists — some old, some new, some not blues artists at all but covering old songs — for one night at Radio City Music Hall. It was at the film festival way back when, so I put it on my zip list…then it arrived and sat by my TV for a month. I guess I just had to be in the right mood to watch it but I wish I’d gotten in the mood sooner…it was amazing! My favourites were Robert Cray and Shemekia Copeland doing “I Pity The Fool” and Solomon Burke doing…well, anything, even talking…but really it was all great. Plus watching David Johansen sing Howlin’ Wolf, and seeing Chuck D and Chris Thomas King freak out the old folks was entertaining.

Even if you don’t like the blues it’d be pretty hard to dislike this movie. And really…who doesn’t like the blues?

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Greendale (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a very different animal. Another film festival entry that we missed (seriously, I think we need to get the 30-pack), it was Neil Young’s vision of a story told through song in a fictional American town. All rookie actors (some of whom were members of his band) with no dialogue, but rather lip-synching along with Neil’s lyrics as the music plays over the scenes. Strong pro-environment, anti-war and anti-Bush overtones (and other popular lefty causes) permeate the whole film. It was very, very weird, and probably unwatchable for most people. I didn’t like it, but at least it was interesting.

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As the West Wing winds down, I have some advice for Josh: Goddammit, man, next time you PICK UP THE KEY IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!

Ahem. Sorry.

Letting my freak(onomics) flag fly

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I finally read Freakonomics (metacritic). Obviously, being a business grad and a data geek, I liked it, but I can see why some people would react badly to it. It’s as frank and methodical as any other economic observation, even when dealing with issues like abortion and race, so people probably have bad knee-jerk reactions to it, but if you read it as presentation of data analysis rather than opinion, you appreciate the cold light Levitt and Dubner throw on things. If you liked the book, read their blog.

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You know when you hear so much about a movie that in your mind you’ve built it up into this classic, when in fact it’s really just an average movie that people liked 35 years ago and it’s somehow built up this cult currency? That was Dirty Harry for me. His little “Do ya feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?” speech just reminds me of Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire: so hackneyed and overdone that I could barely keep myself from wincing when it happened. Ugh.

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I’ve gone back and beefed up my postings from our New York trip. I’ve added links where appropriate and expanded on certain key facts, like exact menu items and types of wine consumed…mostly for T-Bone’s benefit.

"You're asking the wrong question."

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We watched Omagh (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. I love Paul Greengrass’ films; he didn’t direct this one, but he did help write it. And Pete Travis’ style was so similar to Bloody Sunday that it might as well have been the same man. Interestingly enough, it arrived via Zip the day before it was released to theatres here in Canada.

The film is about the 1998 IRA bombing in the town of Omagh, primarily the aftermath and the families of the victims looking to bureaucrats for answers and finding none. It didn’t have the same gutwrenching build that Bloody Sunday did; it was meant to show the long, lasting desperation of the families, the juxtaposition of raw emotion against calculated politics. Highly recommended.

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Off to New York in a couple of hours. We’ll be in the Daily Show audience tomorrow night; not that they show the audience, but maybe you’ll hear him pick on us out-of-towners.

Arrrrrrgghhhhhjroijgoherjhjtohjore

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I’ve been having problems with…Bell’s DNS servers, I guess, since I’m randomly unable to access websites that I know are there. Like this one. As I hit ‘publish’ after writing a great honking post. I’m not typing that shit up again, so I’ll summarize:

That is all. We’re off to New York tomorrow; don’t know how often I’ll be posting.

They're no here

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Ooh, almost forgot: Chromewaves’ Frank noticed that Mogwai will make a stop in Toronto after all. Like him, I think my ears have healed sufficiently since I last saw them. I shall see if M2 is up for it.

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Ever see Ripley’s Game (imdb | rotten tomatoes)? I just watched it this week; don’t even remember how it got onto my Zip list, but I’m glad it did. I liked it very much; Malkovich is better than usual here, and that’s something. I like movies with style; this one has it. It’s subtle, but it’s there.

Beast Confessor

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A follow-up on yesterday’s post about the Enron documentary: Andy Fastow testified today that both Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were aware of all his funny business, and approved it.

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Hooray for eMusic. They had the new albums from both Mogwai and Neko Case (Mr. Beast and Fox Confessor Brings The Flood respectively) available for download today…and download them I did. Unless something goes really awry, I suspect both of these will end up on my year’s end top ten list.

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Even though I feel like ass, I’m playing basketball tonight. Gotta do somethin’; I’ve been a lazy, lazy man of late.

Oh, to be a blue Versace dress…

Dan Dickinson

OK, so, the Oscars:

  • Jon Stewart: very funny. I think he kicked ass (especially the Cheney joke and the “Three 6 Mafia: one Oscar; Martin Scorsese: zero” bit) but I don’t think they’ll ask him back. I think his humour goes over the head of a lot of the viewers.
  • God bless God for making Salma Hayek.
  • Crash didn’t deserve to win best picture. It was good, but it wasn’t the best of the year. Likewise, Reese Witherspoon. Good, but not even in the same league as Felicity Huffman in Transamerica. Rachel Weisz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, George Clooney: well deserved, all.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

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As I said yesterday, we watched three movies over the weekend:

  • North Country (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was pretty good, but not as spectacular as we were led to believe. Basically equal parts Norma Rae and Dead Poets Society, with some Fargo thrown in accent-wise. Worth a rent, though.
  • Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was up for best documentary, so I wanted to watch it before last night. I love documentaries, and this was a good’un; slick production, topical story and a truth bizarre enough to be prize-winning fiction. Highly, highly recommended.
  • 9 Songs (imdb | rotten tomatoes) is one of those films that I think I liked, but could never recommend to people. It was porn, basically. We knew it was nothing but concert footage (of some very good bands, by the way) interspersed with some dialogue and some explicit sex scenes, but we didn’t know how explicit it would be. It’s the kind of stuff they can’t even show on cable, not even on shows about porn. But it wasn’t tawdry, or exploitative; it was a pretty accurate representation of the lives of a couple as they go to concerts at the Brixton Academy, eat breakfast, go on holiday and fuck repeatedly. If you’re the type who can see filmed sex (and filmed music) as art, you might like it. If nothing else, it’s an interesting experiment.

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There’s a bunch of stuff in the news that caught my eye:

  • South Dakota has, for all intents and purposes, banned abortion. America must be a very scary place for a lot of people right now.
  • Toronto Hydro plans to roll out citywide wi-fi like some other major cities in North America.
  • Halifax is still debating the construction of two towers in the downtown core. Personally, I think they should do it; no matter what you build in Halifax, if it’s more than 10 stories, it’s going to block somebody’s view of the citadel or the harbour. I’m sure people thought Purdy’s Wharf was a giant mistake too, but it’s become just as much a part of the cityscape as another building there.

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Today was a long, unpleasant day at work. [Corleone] I keep getting sucked back in [/Corleone] to the technical stuff; moral of the story: never believe someone when they say they won’t expect a temporary solution to become a production solution. They spaz when the so-called temporary solution goes away, even though it’s not your job to provide them with anything. I did my part, I was a nice guy, I saved their ass for a month, but I made sure to wash my hands of it. Still, I got it done and managed to fix a few other things as well. Best of all, I have no meetings scheduled for tomorrow, so I have a whole day to catch up on the work that I’ve missed by essentially wasting my last two weekdays.

It's hard in here for a blogger

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It’s been a busy weekend, so there’s a lot to spit out. We watched a pile of movies, and we’ve been busy all day running errands and preparing for a little Oscar get-together tonight. Best things about the Oscars so far: Jon Stewart, Salma Hayek and “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp” winning for best original song. Worst thing: all the shameless whining by the academy stiffs about the evil of DVDs.

Certified & circumcised

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The Hebrew Hammer (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was weird and dumb, but at least it was trying to be weird and dumb. Think Shaft, but (to borrow a phrase from Jon Stewart) Jewey. It was the kind of dumb humour that makes you groan, sprinkled with the occasional genuinely funny scene (like Adam Goldberg dancing or the WASP teacher trying to pronunce “Chanukah”). Avoid unless you’re a fan of Rob Schneider movies or you’re feeling ironic.

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Hmmmmm…anyone for a little Girlfriend Du Jour? I’m bringing it back for…oh, I don’t know, a couple of months maybe?